Emergence
by Brasc
Summary: When a survey team for the Domination of the Draka discovers alien ruins on Mars, Earth - and the galaxy at large - will never be the same.
1. Chapter 1

**NOVA VIRCONIUM**

**HELLAS PLANITIA, MARS**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**AUGUST 6, 1988**

"Mistis."

Yolande Ingolfsson looked up briefly as the serf woman set the cup and saucer on her desk, then murmured an abstracted, "Thank you, Marya," as she turned her attention back to the terminal's monitor. One hand brought the ceramic cup to her lips and she took a moment to savor it. Kenya Mountain Best, diluted with a quarter of hot cream and a tenth of Thieuniskraal. Warmth and richness flowed over her tongue, with a hint of bite at the back of her mouth and down her throat.

Yolande sighed as she regretfully set the cup back onto its saucer, moodily looking over at the small pile data-plaques set nearby. Promotion had come fast since her unqualified success with the Telmark IV flotilla five years before. Inwardly she smiled savagely at the memory. She'd extracted a small amount of payback from the Yankees for a very large debt.

Putting those Yankee specialists under the Yoke and winning the engagement against pursuing Alliance cruisers afterward had secured a goodly amount of glory and prestige, while the money from the comet she'd helped capture for mining had made her one of the more wealthy Citizens in the whole Domination. Promotion had come swiftly and Yolande had climbed the ranks steadily until she found herself sitting at this very desk, Commandant-Governor of Mars. _Of course,_ she thought a bit self-deprecatingly, _it isn't a very_ big _planet, and there aren't many people on it yet._

She turned her attention back to the terminal, the corners of her mouth turning down as she looked over the latest readings from some of the satellites in orbit. She'd arrived just four months ago, and Yolande had inherited one big mystery from her predecessor. Whenever satellites or ships passed over the south polar region of Promethei Planum, they detected intermittent magnetic field shifts and other strange phenomena. The whole area had gotten a bit of a 'Bermuda Triangle' reputation among the colonists and the space force.

"Freya, what a headache," she muttered under her breath as she pulled the palm-sized synthetic rectangle from the receptor and set it down on the much smaller pile of data-plaques on the other side of her desk. Promethei Planum had been a mystery ever since they'd started regularly monitoring Mars after the establishment of Nova Virconium back in '70, prospecting for ore and water ice deposits. It wasn't about to start unraveling its secrets just because one Yolande Ingolfsson was sitting in the planetary-governor's office.

She slid another plaque into the terminal's receptacle and got back to work. Space force deployments. Quarterly report on mining output - up from the last report, unsurprisingly. The latest proposals for the long-term project of terraforming Mars. It was several hours before Yolande finally set the last plaque onto the 'out' pile and stretched her arms over her head, twisting from side to side to work some of the kinks out of her lower back. "Mm, get a masseuse to work 'em out," she murmured and downed the rest of her coffee as she stood up.

_Bing._ The phone on her desk. The Draka shot a resentful glare at it. _Bing. Bing. _"The things I do for the Race," she sighed as she slowly sat back down and keyed the touchplate. A young face appeared on the screen, blue eyes staring out of an angular, ruggedly handsome face with short cropped black hair and a diamond stud in one earlobe. He wore the uniform blacks of the military and nervously wet his lips as she appeared on his screen. A dew of sweat shone on his brow. _Sweet mother Freya, I don't usually make them that nervous until better acquaintance,_ Yolande thought bemusedly.

When the silence stretched a moment longer than courtesy permitted, she decided to take the initiative. "Service to the State," she rapped out crisply.

"Glory to the Race," the young man answered automatically, and visibly gathered himself. "Centurion Harold McWhirter reportin' from Outpost XII, Chiliarch."

Yolande used the moment to took to lean back in her chair to wrack her brain. _Right, in the far southern hemisphere at Fafnir Crater._ She nodded, partly to herself and also to encourage the young centurion to continue.

"A prospectin' team workin' nearby discovered a... structure. Underground." He licked his lips again and visibly wrestled himself back to calmness. Not that Yolande could blame him, despite the mastering of the Will being the mark of a Citizen of the Race.

"A structure?" she replied slowly. "What kind of structure?"

"Initial readings transmitted back from the lochos sent to the site show that it's large, Chiliarch." Another pause, and she could sense the thrumming excitement behind the younger man's outward facade. "_Real_ large. Mo' like a complex, they say."

"Shitfire," Yolande whispered aloud, then blinked and shook her head. "I want confirmation on this, Centurion. If it's fo'thcoming, I want an entire tetrarchy sent out to secure it."

"Yes, Chiliarch," he rapped out, pounding his fist to his chest in salute.

"And Centurion?" The young man visibly paused on his way to hitting the disconnect and focused back on the screen. "You keep this quiet, y'hear?"

Yolande let a deep breath puff out as she slouched back in the chair, feeling like she'd just taken a surprise shot into the solar plexus as she stared at the blank screen. "Mistis?" She looked up to see the Yankee serf, Marya, standing at the door to her office, her usual blank expression betraying a hint of surprise at the sight of the usually controlled Draka in such a position. "Is... something wrong?"

"Never you mind," Yolande said, sitting up setting her folded hands on the desk top. "Get me another coffee, I got a lot more work ahead of me." Marya nodded, confusion evident on her face, and turned to head back out.

After the sound of the serf's footsteps receded, Yolande indulged herself in a short laugh that was part hysterical. "An underground structure. On _Mars._" Books like that had started to go out of style during her teens as both the Domination and the Alliance made their way into solar system and started to disprove many of the fanciful ideas of authors from earlier years. Suddenly everything was up in the air again.

After a pause for thought, she bared her teeth in what wasn't a grin. "And it's _ours_." The Domination had always lagged behind the Yankees in certain technologies. If even part of what her fevered imagination conjured up was actually in that structure... _Glory to the Race,_ she thought. _Glory to the Race._


	2. Chapter 2

**NEW YORK CITY**

**FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT**

**DONOVAN HOUSE**

**NOVEMBER 12, 1988**

"We can't let the Snakes monopolize this thing they've found on Mars," Frederick Lefarge ground out. He was leaning forward slightly in the stiff government-issue office chair, his dark-grey eyes blazing.

Nathaniel Stoddard raised his hands, palms up, as he stiffly made his way back to his chair behind his desk and sat with a small sigh. His mustache was solid grey streaked with white now, just like the thinning hair on top he kept in a semblance of an academic's shag-cut. _Eighty-four this year,_ he thought wearily_. Who would have thought I'd be around to see something like this come to pass?_

"I happen to agree with you, Fred," he said in a voice with the flat vowels and drawl of Boston. "It's bad enough trying to keep their Krypteia people from stealing too much of our technology. If they really have an alien base under their control..." The head of the OSS paused and shook his head. "Still damned strange to be actually saying that."

Lefarge sat back in his chair and briefly ran a hand back through his black hair just beginning to be streaked with grey. "They found something there, General. You wouldn't have brought me all the way back from the Belt if this was nothing, alien base or not."

Stoddard pressed a spot on his desk screen, and a thin-film rectangle slid up along one wall. "True enough. Traffic, both physical and communication, has spiked sharply between their bases in the Earth-Moon system and Mars." He hesitated a moment, then produced his pipe and lit it, taking a couple of puffs before looking back at the younger man across the desk. "We've also gotten reliable intelligence from a source close to the top hierarchy on Mars. Nova Virconium. Commandant-Governor's office, in fact."

Lefarge seemed to tense, though he made no outward signs. "Marya?"

A nod. "Ayuh. She reopened contact through channels we'd prepared in advance for such an eventuality." A slight grimace passed over the old man's face. "I don't like that events have forced her to this. I'd prefer that she'd waited until she felt she was deep enough to reestablish contact of her own volition. But as you said, they've got some kind of structure there and they're treating it like the Holy Grail. Spy probes confirm that they've moved an entire merarchy of those ghouloons to that site in the southern hemisphere."

Frederick closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Ma soeur, he thought. _My sister. Marya, I hope you know what you're doing._ His twin sister, Marya Lefarge, had been under the Draka yoke ever since she'd been captured during the India fiasco back in '76. She had been bought by a pilot officer shortly after the Domination's conquest of the subcontinent had wrapped up, a Draka named Yolande Ingolfsson.

He opened his eyes and his lips thinned as he clenched his teeth. The same Yolande Ingolfsson who had boarded the _Pathfinder_ in '82, the ship that had been transporting his wife, Cindy, and their two daughters to Ceres for the New America project. He had stayed behind to deal with final business before taking a faster warship to meet his family there at roughly the same time. Ingolfsson nursed a grudge against him for killing some redhead in India in a passing firefight, and when she had discovered who Cindy's husband was-

Later. Now wasn't the time to bring those memories back up. "If it's a structure, then it _has_ to be alien," Lefarge said, bringing his mind back to business by main force.

"So it would seem," Stoddard agreed. "In a more perfect world the discovery of life beyond Earth would be some watershed event in human history, showing us all how small our petty differences are. As it is..."

"The Snakes are barely human themselves," Lefarge nodded. "They probably see their discovery of it as confirmation of this delusions of being the Master Race, the opportunity to put the Alliance under the Yoke once and for all."

"Something we're going to have to disabuse them of." A smile crossed the bony New England face as he took a few more puffs from his pipe. "You're aware of the convention the Domination has allowed to grow up? No peace beyond Luna?"

"I damn well better." Memories of the _Pathfinder_ ran through his head again.

Stoddard grimaced. "Sorry about that, Fred. You know what I meant." He sighed and cupped the bowl of the pipe in his hand, running a finger and thumb along his mustache with his other hand. "The Draka use their corvettes and gunboats to highjack our shipments of materials from the Belt back to Earth. We've decided that it's about time we return the favor.

"Sources have revealed that there's going to be a big shipment of artifacts and such from that ruin from Mars to Aresopolis, the main Draka base on Luna."

Lefarge stopped to consider a moment, then reluctantly shook his head. "General, you know as well as I do that any such shipment is going to have heavy security. The Space Force is spread across the solar system, and they know where every one of our cruisers is."

Stoddard studied his young protege for a long moment. "Not all of them."

"Wait, you can't mean-"

"Ayuh, it's exactly what I mean. You think I brought you back here just to have a chat?"

Lefarge stared at the older man, floored. "The _New America_ is supposed to be used as a last resort! It's supposed to take colonists to Alpha Centauri in case the war destroys Earth. Besides, it's not even finished."

"But enough of it is, and a good many of those auxiliaries are ready, right?"

"I..." Lefarge shook his head, then straightened in his chair. "Yes, sir. About a half dozen are ready with another one ready to be launched within the next couple months." A pause. "Sir, are you sure about this?"

"Sure? No. But I do know that we can't let the Domination have sole access to whatever technology they may have found there. Most everybody in San Francisco agrees, and they've convinced the Alliance Chairman the same." A warm smile. "I understand your hesitation. New America has been your baby for over a decade. But there's times to keep the knife in your sleeve, and times to take the thing out and stab the bastard. This discovery has changed everything, Fred. Get those ships ready."

Frederick Lefarge stood and saluted sharply. "Yes, sir!"


	3. Chapter 3

**NOVA VIRCONIUM**

**COMMAND CENTRAL**

**HELLAS PLANITIA, MARS**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**MARCH 13, 1989**

Yolande was typing away at her terminal - with the piles of data-plaques even taller on her desk than before - when Marya appeared in the doorway and bowed at the waist, eyes to the floor and arms at her sides. "Mistis. Chiliarch Snappdove has arrived."

The Draka saved the files she was working on and pulled the data-plaque out with relief. The Commandant-Governor's job was usually something she could sink her teeth into, overseeing expansion of colonies and mining operations and making Mars an integral part of the Domination. She had dreamed about becoming a pilot since she was a child; models of aircraft still lined the shelves of her old room back home, at Claestum Plantation in Italy. Of the _Ahriman_, the first war dirigible; miniatures of her parents' prop-driven Eagle fighters, from the Eurasian War; a plastic suborb missile she had put together herself from a kit; and a scramjet fighter, a long slim delta shape banking in frozen motion on its stand.

When the first scramjet flight to orbit had occurred in '59, followed by the first lunar landings and settlements in '62, Yolande's dreams had shifted higher. The Air Force had become merely a stepping stone to space, helping to drive her people's triumphant march across the solar system. _Ah, Myfwany,_ she thought sadly. _I wish you could be here to see it all._

"Send him in, by all means." She started to step around the desk as the serf did an about face and headed back out to the anteroom. Lately, though, her job had become too much like real work. Assigning military units to the alien base near Fafnir Crater, overseeing warship deployments in orbit, liaising with the Security Directorate to prevent the Alliance from getting too clear a picture of why Mars had so suddenly spiked in importance.

A spike of anger brought a scowl to her face and made her clench her fists. The Yankees. The destroyers of all happiness, the oaf-lump impediment that stood always in the Race's path. Aresopolis, a single domed green city in a crater, an ornament above a fortress, when the Moon might be laced with them like living jewels. Megaprojects to make green paradise of frozen Mars and burning Venus. The freedom to unlock the secrets of the alien base without the need for so much security. Always intriguing, threatening with their sly greasy-souled merchant cunning, menacing the future of her blood. Gwen, Nikki, Holden still unborn, whose years ought to stretch out before them like diamonds in the sun...

"Everythin' you are, we'll bring to nothin'," she said in tones quiet and even and measured. "We'll grind you bones to make our bread, and you children will serve mine until the end of days."

With an effort she brought herself back to the present and relaxed her fists, schooling her expression to calmness as her appointment walked into the room, Marya bowing and closing the door behind him. A broad-built man, bear strong, only fifty millimeters taller than she; you could see that he might have been pear-shaped among any people but Draka. A hooked nose, balding brow, and a brush of dark-brown beard with the first dusting of silver.

"Good to see you again," she said to Doctor Harry Snappdove, gripping his wrist. "Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race," he replied; his return grip was a precisely controlled machine. His accent was Alexandrian, with a hint of East European. His family was one of the rare elite - scientists mostly - given Citizen status after the conquest. "Congratulations on your promotion, Strategos," he continued with a smile.

Yolande smiled back, replied, "I do seem to find mahself in the right place at the right time." They had worked together in the Telmark IV flotilla, she commanding the operation that captured the Alliance transport _Pathfinder_, and he overseeing the capture of the comet and assisting in defeating the Alliance cruisers that had been pursuing her. She gestured to the chair in front of her desk and made her way back to her seat as Snappdove perched himself nearly on the edge of it, giving off an almost palpable air of energy and excitement.

"Am I to presume things are goin' well, professor?"

Snappdove spread his hands, a gesture that showed his East European heritage. "It's fascinating and frustrating all at once. If this alien complex has shown me anything, it's how much we don't know."

Yolande stared at him impassively, her gaze cold. "I thought you said you had been makin' progress."

"Of course, of course," he replied hastily. "We discovered the device that was the cause for all the strange phenomena. We've dated it to around fifty _thousand_ years old, and it was still working! Well, barely anyway." His eyes lit as he leaned forward in his seat. "We recorded magnetic field shifts around it, but the most amazing thing are the other type of fields this core is able to create. Inside these fields I recorded a sort of compressed..." He paused as he sought out a term to adequately describe it. "A sort of compressed mass effect, created during the discharges of the core. Artificial mass shift fields!" The professor's eyes seemed to glaze in sheer scientific ecstasy.

Yolande frowned. "D'you mean like gravity? This is some sort of artificial gravity device? Strange thing to have on the surface of a planet."

Snappdove shook his head vigorously. "No, it's far more than just that."

The female Draka raised her eyebrows. Artificial gravity seemed impressive enough to her. It meant not as much exercise needed on prolonged voyages, along with countless other applications to make space travel and ship construction far easier.

He made the spreading-hands gesture again as he noticed her expression. "Think of it! A compressed mass effect field like this one could be used to push debris away from a ship in space, while in manufacturing we could use an extremely high mass compaction to create dense, sturdy materials for construction and any number of uses." A smile spread across his face. "But it doesn't stop there. Imagine if we can use this technology to go the opposite way, creating low-mass fields! If a compressed field could be used to push debris _away_ from a ship..."

Yolande's brow furrowed as she tried to follow the professor's line of thought. A few seconds later her eyes widened. "Sweet mother Freya," she breathed. "Anti-gravity. Fo'get scramjets, we could move any amount of cargo between a planetary surface and its orbit!"

Snappdove nodded enthusiastically. "And it doesn't stop there! If you could maintain a strong enough low-mass field around a ship while it travels through space, you could potentially lower the its mass enough that it could travel _faster-than-light!_"

"Freya." She felt like she'd taken another surprise punch to the solar plexus at the enormity of what they had discovered. "Shitfire," she continued, slowly gathering herself. "You sayin' this could not only open up the outer solar system, but maybe so _other_ star systems?"

"Precisely." The professor's smile faded a bit as he continued, "However, discoverin' how this core does it is a whole other problem." A deep sigh. "I'm not even sure what... how..." He stopped and raised his hands, clenching them into fists as he stared into space, obviously wrestling with how to put the problem into words. "_How_ are these fields created? _What_ exactly is being manipulated to cause the compression of matter? It isn't gasses like an atmosphere, and it isn't magnetic. It's like... like there's some other sort of energy at work that we haven't been able to detect so far. The only thing I can be sure of is that the core itself must be creating the energy that is used to create these fields."

"Wait a minute, I thought energy could be measured. What makes this energy so special?"

Snappdove frowned. "That's the problem. This goes into fields of physics that are way beyond my expertise. We won't know more until that shipment reaches the experts gathered at Aresopolis, but one of my colleagues believes it could be some sort of 'dark energy', as he termed it, that could be the reason for the expansion of the universe."

Yolande shook her head. _Ouch._ "Professor, this is all way beyond _mah_ expertise. I'll let you and t'other scientists handle it. What can you tell me about that computer you found? Anythin' on that front?"

"Oh definitely. Whoever these aliens were, their computer architecture is much more open than ours. It appears to be almost wholly digital with no analog components we've had to locate and examine. There's definitely a large data cache stored in it, but it'll take time to decipher the alien language it's written in. We're hopin' it'll shed some light on all the questions that mass effect core has raised. The Archon has assigned all the best minds in the whole Domination to the decipherin' effort."

The professor shook his head. "This technology will push us forward _centuries_, Strategos. We're just barely on the cusp of even beginning to understand it as it is. If we hadn't been pushin' the space effort as hard as we have been, who knows how long it would have taken for us to find that complex?" He leaned back in his seat. "Imagine if we'd pursued rockets instead of scramjets in the early years we were just tryin' to get to orbit. They're toys, compared to even the first scramjets which could carry six tonnes to orbit. The Yankees kept tryin' to model the airflows with inadequate computers, and we ended up buildin' a gigawatt of nuclear power stations, using the whole Dniester for cooling, to get that Mach-18 quarter scale wind tunnel. Even then we _still_ had disasters."

Yolande nodded. "The early pulsedrives were almost as bad. We lost a lot of brave people, using them in the outer solar system."

"This mass effect field technology could change everything!" He leaned forward again. "Instead of over a year from Earth to the outer planets, it might end up takin' _hours_."

Yolande was shaking her head in bemusement when her phone binged. She looked at it in surprise. Everyone knew better than to interrupt her when she was in the middle of a meeting. "Mah apologies," she said to Snappdove as she keyed the touchplate. "Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race." A female face was on the screen; from the background she was at the tracking station at the Nova Virconium Spaceport. "Strategos, we've received relayed sensor readings from orbit. We're trackin' multiple unidentified cruisers moving out from the direction of the Belt." She licked her lips nervously. "They on an intercept course for the convoy headin' for Aresopolis."

Sheer surprise nearly froze the Commandant-General's breathing, and she resisted the weakness that almost allowed her jaw to sag open in shock. _Wha-? How the-? There aren't supposed to be any Yankee cruisers anywhere near here! _An incandescent rage began building inside her. "I shoulda known it was too good to be true," she muttered evenly. All the Alliance Space Force cruisers had been conveniently either out of reach in the further reaches of the Belt and outer planets, or in the Earth-Moon system where Draka forces would be able to escort the convoy to the safety of Luna where a Yankee attack would mean full-scale war.

"Strategos?" Snappdove looked alarmed. Rightfully so, she thought. The Domination's new ace-in-the-hole had fallen into a trap. She wasn't naive enough to think the Yankees' hadn't known that anything was on Mars. _But how did they know about the convoy? Where and when it was going?_

"I'm afraid I'm goin' to have to cut this meetin' short, Chiliarch," she said in an even voice, all the more frightening for its utter lack of emotion. "I've got somethin' to look into."


	4. Chapter 4

The Domination of the Draka and all related properties are the property of S.M. Stirling. Mass Effect and all related properties are the property of Bioware.

* * *

**ABOARD ASFS **_**SACAJAWEA**_

**TRANSLUNAR SPACE**

**MARCH 18, 1989**

Frederick Lefarge looked hungrily at the spread of trajectories on the plotting console before him. The _Sacajawea_ was one of the seven shuttlecraft - out of the eventual full dozen the _New America_ would carry - sent along on this task force, mirror-matter powered, equally suited to atmosphere or deep-space work. That was easy enough with a power supply as energetic as antihydrogen. If the _New America_ ever sailed, it would be a one-way trip with not much hope of return, and a long time before a functioning economy could be established at the target star. Her auxiliaries had been designed to last a century, and do everything from lifting kilotonne-mass loads out of a terrestrial-sized gravity well to interplanetary freighting. This one could cross the solar system and back in forty days, without refueling.

And it could fight the Great Khan-class cruisers escorting the Draka convoy quite handily. Those Snakes were going to get a _very_ unpleasant surprise.

"Distance and bearing?" That was the _Sacajawea's_ captain, Ibrahim Kurasaka.

"One forty kilometers, closing at point-five kps relative," the senior officer replied.

There were eight bogies on Lefarge's screen; two screens to his left blanked and then showed 360-degree views of the Draka vessel classes. Six were the Great Khan-class cruiser escorts with third-generation pulsedrives - fission pellets compressed by lasers. The other two were cargo carriers, originally built for work around the gas-giant moons and rare this far in-system.

Banking off to bracket either side of the convoy were the seven auxiliaries of the _New America_: the _Sacajawea_, _Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira_, _Matthew Flinders_, _Yamato_, _James Cook_, _Christopher Columbus_, and the newly completed _Amerigo Vespucci_. The _New America_ itself was back in the asteroid belt; Lefarge had decided to use the extensive leeway he was allowed as the head of the Black Fund project to keep the unfinished vessel out of the line of fire. _Besides,_ he thought, _It looks like we're going to outweigh them enough as it is._

"Orders, Brigadier Lefarge?" Kurasaka asked. The Javanese-Nipponese captain was the commanding officer of the _Sacajawea_ while Lefarge was commanding the entire task force. His manning a board here was irregular, but there were times when the book didn't matter all that much.

Lefarge contemplated the screens in front of him with a frown. His ships were a whole generation of technology ahead of the enemy vessels, but most of them were dedicated warships which made them dangerous, especially the long jet of plasma spewing from their drives which could be deadly in the right hands. Not to mention that the other two had to be _captured_, not destroyed. Much more difficult.

"To the task force: prepare for acceleration; pass at 5 kps relative, then swing around for another pass at five kilometers. Fire at will upon the cruisers in sequence." There was a reason the Alliance auxiliaries were bracketing the Draka convoy, putting their enemies' slower ships in a crossfire. "Target cargo carriers' drives and control compartments, and cut the connections to their main power coils." There were megawatts stored in that, and if it went nonsuperconducting all of it would be converted to heat - _rapidly._

"And let's hope their suicide bombs really have been disabled," he muttered to himself. They were standard on all Draka ships, the equivalent to the 'passport' poison pills their Citizen soldiers carried to prevent being captured alive. _It would be a shame to come all this way just to see all that alien technology go up in smoke._

Acknowledgments chimed in from the ships in the task force. "All vessels report orders confirmed," the senior officer stated.

Lefarge took a deep breath, then let a smile stretch across his face. _Time to show the Snakes they aren't the Lords of Creation they think they are._ "Let's go."

"We have a go," Kurasaka repeated. "Execute drive burn."

The _Sacajawea_ surged underneath and around them as hydrogen and antihydrogen met inside the core and the drive channeled reaction mass out of the thrusters. The _New America_ auxiliaries rocketed towards the Draka convoy, quickly beginning to overtake them.

"Burn normal."

"Approaching targets. Preparing for firing missions. Execute."

Needles of coherent light and hails of railgun slugs raked across all the Draka ships, while missiles shot out themselves from the auxiliaries' launch tubes to aim solely at the cruisers. Countermissiles and point-defense fire from the cruisers' Gatling turrets lashed out to engage the incoming missiles. They had the occasional lucky hit, but human reflexes and the inferior electronics of the Domination's warships couldn't deal with all of them.

Light blossomed among the Great Khan-class cruisers as warheads punched breaches into hulls and outrushing air fed the flames that burned briefly until the localized compartments where filled with vacuum. Lefarge grinned as a chorus of shouts and cheers rose among the bridge staff, one or two punching a fist into the air. The Domination's 'aggressive neutrality' during the Protracted Struggle of the past decades had not earned it many friends in the countries of the Alliance for Democracy.

Kurasaka shouted the noise down after a few moments. "That's enough! You're Alliance soldiers! Act like it!"

The bridge immediately quieted, and even Lefarge - Kurasaka's superior officer - compressed the bared teeth of his grin down to a smile. _God damn, but I love seeing those Snake ships burn!_

Soon the Alliance ships were past the Draka convoy and sit-reps began pouring in. "...reports green across the board. _Ferreira_ reports green across the board. _Columbus_ reports breach to portside hull from missile near-miss, damage control teams responding."

Both Lefarge and Kurasaka winced. _I suppose it was wishful thinking to think we could get through this unscathed._ No matter how much advanced your technology was over your enemy's, Lady Luck let you roll sevens only so many times. _Sometimes it comes up snake eyes, ran sourly through Lefarge's mind,_ and shook his head with annoyance at the phrase his subconscious had dredged up.

As the _Sacajawea's_ thrusters swung it around for another pass at the convoy, however, they were able to see the devastation that one pass had wrought upon the Draka ships. All of the cruisers had severe damage and, as they watched, one of them detonated as it's commander must have decided the ship was beyond saving and detonated their suicide bomb. Not being the primary targets of the first pass, the cargo carriers had less damage and were trying to make a run for it with a full burn of their drives.

Lefarge cursed and looked at the plotting console to place their intended courses and the placement of the Alliance auxiliaries. "To the task force: _Flinders_ and _Yamato_ to form up with the Sacajawea for pursuit and disabling of the cargo carriers. The rest of the fleet is to stay behind with the enemy cruisers." His eyes narrowed as he looked at the scarred Draka cruisers venting atmosphere and struggling to keep their ships in one piece.

_Great Khan-class cruisers. The type of ship that attacked the Pathfinder with Cindy and the girls aboard. Hell, maybe one of those is the very ship that did it._ He felt a tempest behind his eyes and in his chest as his mind replayed his first sight of Cindy after boarding the Pathfinder a month after the Draka abandoned them in the disabled ship.

The screams.

"Finish them off."

* * *

**NOVA VIRCONIUM**

**HELLAS PLANITIA, MARS**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**MARCH 15, 1989**

Yolande Ingolfsson had a scowl fixed on her face as she strode rapidly into servant's quarters. _Marya._ She was the most obvious source for the leak, a born Yankee put under the yoke in India. _Too_ obvious, almost. Still, she had put off investigating the wench long enough.

_Almost like I feel guilt for what I did to her after Myfwany died,_ and snorted amusement at the thought. Guilt was a bourgeois emotion for serfs, not Citizens of the Race.

_Maybe because she bore Gwen beneath her heart for those long months._ She sighed inwardly. If her suspicions were true, the betrayal and death of her tantie-ma would would devastate her oldest daughter, the New Race clone of Myfwany.

Nothing in the bedroom but a bed with a quilt coverlet; there was a signed holo of Gwen by the bed. The sitter was a room about four meters by three, lit by glowceiling, walls of foam rock and tile floor covered by throw rugs. A couch along one wall, a couple of chairs, cushions. The viewer screen, a row of dataplaques beside it, with the garish covers of serf entertainment.

Yolande stopped dead. A perscomp on a table, with a chair still pushed back as if in haste; the screen was dark, but the indicator was on, something running.

_She's not cleared for one of those._ Two quick strides brought her to the chair, and she noticed a dataplaque already in the receptor. A crawling sensation began running along her back as she hit the DIVIDE command on the keyboard.

The screen blanked to light gray, then lit. A man's face appeared. In an Alliance uniform, with brigadier's shoulderboards. American eagle, OSS flashes. Unremarkable face, square, rather dark, big-nosed; in his forties, a little gray in the flat-topped black hair, eyes black too, so that the pupil didn't show. Deep grooves, ridged forehead, the face of a man hagridden for many years. Yolande heard her own breath freeze in a strangled gasp, felt a sheet of ice lock her diaphragm.

_Him._

"Marya, my sister, you must realize from this how desperate the situation is."

_Him._ India. The cool Punjab night, and the missiles arching up from the trees. _Pssft_-thud, and Myfwany's graceful stride turning to a tumbling fall.

"This plaque must be wiped as soon as you've read it. Here are your instructions."

_Him._ The face, under the upraised visor. That single glimpse.

"...je t'aime, ma souer," the voice concluded. She touched the controls and the screen blacked. Her own face reflected dimly in the darkened screen. Eyes gone enormous, lips peeled back until the gums showed. A trickle of hoarse sound escaped her throat.

"His _sister_. _His_ sister. I've had his _sister_ in my own household fo' _thirteen years_!" A bubble of laughter escaped her, and she ground her teeth closed on it, feeling something thin and hot stabbing between her eyes.

_Wait._ The crawling sensation on her back was intensified, noticeable to her conscious mind now. _This was too easy. Why would she leave this out in the open-_

A reflection in the screen, next to her face. A woman standing in the doorway, watching her.

_Marya!_

Yolande began to turn as the serf brought the Tolgren 9mm level. Long trained reflex overrode the impossible sight of an armed serf here, in Nova Virconium! A snarl ratcheted out of her throat as she began a spring at the Yankee spy.

_Too late._

The crack of the gunshot followed quickly on the heels of the impact sledging into her forehead.

Blackness.

* * *

Marya Lefarge stared down at the sight of Yolande on the floor, a neat hole in her brow, lips parted even in death to reveal her teeth. The perscomp was splattered with blood and brains, the throw rug beneath rapidly sodden with dark red.

A laugh forced its way up from her chest and through her throat. A wave of elation flowed through her. _This is most alive I've felt in thirteen years!_

A wry smirk twisted her mouth as she heard running footsteps rapidly approaching. _Ironic,_ she though as she turned to face to door to her quarters, her face calming to a serene expression. The past few months had been exhilarating, despite the constant danger of prolonged, painful death. But it was something. It was helplessness that was the worst thing about being a slave. Not abuse, not privation, not the ritualized humiliation; it was not being able to _do_ anything except what they wanted.

The door burst open, propelled by the shoulder of a Citizen in the uniform blacks of the War Directorate, cradling a Holbars T-7 assault rifle in his arms. A stunned moment as he took in the sight of the blood spattered serf with the gun in her hand.

Then she quickly brought it to her temple. _Don't let them win, Frederick._ Pulled the trigger.

* * *

Frederick Lefarge was smiling as he saw the tubes extending from the Alliance ships to the drifting Draka cargo carriers. There were still Marines in skinsuits and flexible body armor along the exterior of the hulls, propelling themselves with reaction guns.

"...all dead in here," a voice was saying over the intercom, relayed from the suit-mike of one of the Marines who had boarded one of the two ships. "Looks like they all popped their passports after they realized the self-destruct wasn't going to work."

"Good work, Lieutenant Shepard," Kurasaka replied. "Make sure the rest of the ship is secure." The captain turned to Lefarge, smiled as he snapped off a regulation salute. "Sir, I present to you two Draka cargo carriers, filled to the brim with alien artifacts."

Lefarge returned the salute as a relaxed atmosphere seemed to fill the bridge, some low chatter and laughter rising from the crew. "Relay to the task force: Good work. We stomped a good many Snakes today and showed them they're not the only ones who can play this game."

_Now we get to see where this technology will take us._


	5. Chapter 5

**ASCENSION ISLAND**

**SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN**

**ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY**

**APRIL 1, 1990**

Eric von Shrakenberg - newly elected Archon of the Domination of the Draka - squinted against the tropical sun as he descended the forward ramp of the _Andrapoda_, the dirigible that had brought him to this isolated island of volcanic rock. Before him the forward elements of Archonal Guard spread out to secure the immediate area of cracked concrete of the landing zone, the Citizen soldiers panning their Holbars T-7 assault rifles around slowly, hands on the pistol grips forward of the action, their eyes cold and alert behind the visors of their helmets. Others were behind him and at either side at the minimum respectful distance, their unit blazon visible on the lobster-tail plates of their armguards: an armored gauntlet crushing a terrestrial globe in its fist.

Trailing behind the vanguard of the Draka party were a group from the Security Directorate in their olive green uniforms with skull patches on their collars, their hands resting on the butts of their late-model Tolgren pistols with a 30-round horizontal casette magazine of caseless 5mm ammunition above the barrel. Their eyes flicked back and forth, backs straight and ignoring the almost palpable air of derision the Archonal Guard soldiers were aiming at them with lordly disdain.

_They a bit closer to the sharp end a' things than usual,_ Eric thought wryly. He was a man of nearly seventy-two, still straight but moving with care. He had the typical hawk-nosed von Shrakenberg looks, as well as a mustache and thick hair with more white than yellow nowadays. Lines were scored down his face on either side of his beak nose, the look of a man that had seen and experienced much in his long life. He made a sharp contrast to the much younger men and women around him in his linen suit of indigo and white lace with silk cravat, compared to their cermet armor and uniforms.

Waiting about thirty feet away were three vehicles, large six-wheelers with an enclosed body of molded composite armor. _Copied from us._ Vehicles were one area that the Domination had always held the advantage over the Yankees, from Trevithick's first steam drags of the early 19th Century to modern ducted fan aircars. These were based on Eurasian War-era Draka transports, what the Alliance officially designated ATWVs: All-Terrain Wheeled Vehicles, or as their soldiers had nicknamed them, Weevils. Surrounding them were a group of American soldiers wearing their own version of cermet armor with American flag shoulder flashes, quivering tense as they held their own Springfield-16 assault rifles at the ready but not quite pointing at the Draka party. In front of them all was an officer in the dress uniform of the United States Army, his swarthy complexion and slanted eyes speaking of a likely Hispanic-Asian mixture.

The officer's eyes were cold as he approached Eric, his steps and stature stiff and machined. The soldiers to either side of the Archon bristled as the American came to a stamping halt and snapped his right forearm up in a formal Yankee-style salute. "Excellence," the Army soldier began, "I am Captain Benito Aguinaldo, United States Army. President Hiero welcomes you to Ascension Island. We are to escort you and your party to the meeting site."

Eric inclined his head politely to the young officer. "Greetin's to you, Captain. Quite the welcome party you've arranged fo' us," he observed dryly, his eyes taking in the armed force. Behind him three Velite-class armored personnel carriers rolled down the ramp from the cargo bay of the _Andrapoda_, an aged design by Draka standards, but the War Directorate's Intelligence Section had been reluctant to risk any of the latest of the Domination's technology in a visit to Alliance territory.

"Merely an escort, Excellence, as I said." The hooded look to Aguinaldo's eyes seemed to say something completely different as his eyes flicked around to take in the Citizen Force soldiers and Security Directorate headhunters. Disgust practically radiated from every stiffened line of his body.

_Yankees sho' taught this one well,_ Eric thought idly. _Must be Filipino-Mexican at a guess._ Both areas where American states had been carved out of regions heavily populated by non-Europeans. _And this Aguinaldo has that famous Yankee holier-than-thou attitude down pat._ That strait-laced moralism grated with more than just brief encounters, so mirror-opposite to Draka ways.

"Well then, shall we?" Aguinaldo replied with a curt nod, made an about-face and walked back to his comrades waiting by the Weevils. There was a low mutter from the young soldier to his right, a member of the New Race, who likely thought his voice too quiet for the aged human Archon to hear: "_Damnyankee pigfuckah..._"

Eric maintained his inscrutable exterior, but inwardly sighed and shook his head as he made his way to one of the Velite APCs. Relations between the Domination and the Alliance had gone from the usual aggressive espionage and border skirmishes and spiraled to downright venomous in the year since the convoy carrying alien artifacts and a copy of the complex's database had been pirated by the newly revealed Alliance fleet based in the Belt.

The fact that he had to attend this meeting in person on Alliance territory was a measure of how bad things had gotten: the Security Directorate and its political allies among the Militants had outright refused to allow Yankee electronics in the Archonal Palace to establish a personal line of communication between the Domination's Archon and the American President in Donovan House. From all accounts the OSS had been just as strident with regards to Domination equipment.

_Now we have to risk this damn flashpoint to have a civilized conversation,_ Eric thought coldly. The meeting place was on an isolated island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, roughly midway between Alliance Brazil and Draka West Africa. Both leaders had had to travel in unescorted slow-moving dirigibles that could be easily monitored by either side, and both sides _still_ had massive naval forces standing by, ready for someone to get an itchy trigger finger and launch the Final War. Eric knew for sure that the Domination's XV Fleet had sortied out from Capetown to oversee the meeting between the two heads of state from just outside the island's territorial waters. _Wotan knows what the Yankees have out there._ They always had been better at the naval side of warfare, while the Domination had been a primarily land power for most of its existence.

The view outside the window as the Draka convoy - flanked to the front and rear by the Alliance Weevils - made its way along the dirt road was a barren wasteland of volcanic rocks and cinder cones with the rare green plant hopefully poking up here and there amidst large lava fields. Eric's lips twisted with distaste; a similar island within the Domination's territory would have had its mountain peaks sown with planned forests by the Conservancy Directorate with the rest of the island following suit in the ensuing decades. _Say what you will about the Draka, at the very least my people know how to make things pleasin' to the eye,_ he thought.

It wasn't long before the greenery surrounding Georgetown, the island's capital, came into view. The outskirts were made up of suburbs of housing remarkably small, drab and uniform to Draka eyes, military houses built to house Ascension Island's swelling garrison as the Protracted Struggle between the Alliance and the Domination heated up. The core of the town, however, was made up of the same 19th Century buildings that had been constructed after the town had been founded to house a Royal Marines garrison to oversee Napoleon Bonaparte's exile to St. Helena, and then its expansion as a waypoint between South America and Africa after the establishment of regular airship lines in the 1890s.

The convoy stopped in front of a large Victorian building of wooden construction with white paint and a steeply sloped red tile roof. Slightly faded gilded lettering declared it the Exiles Club, what Eric knew from his pre-summit briefing to have been a hotel-cum-resort visited by assorted celebrities and dignitaries during its heyday in the years leading up to the economic recession of the 1930s. Its fortunes had fallen sharply upon the outbreak of the Eurasian War and the break in relations and travel between the Domination and the Western Hemisphere in the late 1940s.

Eric stepped out of the APC and strode towards the double doors of the hotel, inclining his head respectfully to the formal salutes from the two American soldiers standing guard. One of them stepped away from the door and was replaced by one of the Archonal Guard soldiers as he approached, one of the protocols that had been agreed on beforehand. A few paces behind him, another Draka soldier and the American from the doors followed him inside, trailed in their turn by the Security Directorate officers and representatives from the Foreign Affairs Directorate that had accompanied him to this summit.

The front hall still had the smell of mustiness about it, a building that had obviously seen little use for many years until today. Two staircases of tropical hardwoods with marble veneered steps trimmed with gilt swept upward to either side of the elaborately carved front desk. Eric imagined he could almost hear the bustle of smartly uniformed bellhops rushing about, carrying the luggage of European, Brazilian or even American big game hunters taking a few days leisure on their way to the vast game preserves of the then Dominion of Draka, part of the British Empire, or those of Draka Citizens making forays into the Empire of Brazil to visit or tour foreign plantations until slavery was finally abolished by Pedro III in the early years of the 20th Century. The walk to the dining room reinforced that impression, the walls adorned with framed pictures of the more famous visitors of the Exiles Club: royalty, nobles, celebrities, politicians, mostly dressed in white linen suits of eye-searing brilliance under the tropical sun.

Eric paused at the entrance to the dining room, taking in the sight before him. A long table had been set at the center of the room, lined with chairs. Against the far wall two flags were hung next to each other: the American Stars and Stripes, what many Draka called the 'Bloody Zebra' with its star-spangled blue field in the upper left corner; and the Domination's Drakon, a crimson bat-winged dragon with a green-silver-gold sunburst on its chest on a black background, clutching the slave-fetter of mastery and the sword of death in its claws.

And standing in front of the table was a short Hispanic woman, flanked by Secret Service agents in their plain dark suits, as well as uniformed OSS officers. Eric stepped forward even as he felt his skin crawl. _I know Virunga Biocontrol says the Stone Dogs has adequate controls in place, but standing right here with them..._ His face maintained its polite amiability as he inclined his head to her. "Madam President."

"Excellence," she replied, with meticulous courtesy.

_She may have been added to balance the ticket, but I don't think the Yankees lost when Liedermann slipped on the soap,_ Eric decided. President Carmen Hiero was the second Hispanic and the first woman to sit in the same chair as Jefferson and Douglas; before that she had been a Republican _jefe politico_ in Sonora, still very unusual for a woman in the States carved out of Old Mexico. Fiftyish, graying, _criolla_ blueblood by descent, mixed with Irish from a line of silver-mine magnates: that much he knew from the briefing papers. Old _haciendado_ family, but not a shellback by Yankee standards; degrees in classics, history, and some odd American specialty known as political science, whatever that was. _A contradiction in terms, from the title._

They shook hands, one brief firm shake while her black eyes met his calmly, then proceeded to their respective heads of the table. _Almost as much body-language control as a Draka,_ he thought with interest. _Better than some of us do, actually. I wonder how deep it runs._

"I suspect," Hiero began as they took their seats, "that you asked for this meeting with regard to the discovery on Mars."

"That does seem to be an obvious point of discussion," he replied dryly. A pause. "Why _did_ you agree to this meeting, Senora?"

"I suspect my reasoning was much like yours, von Shrakenberg. The convenience of dealing with this issue without the circumlocutions essential where things are said in public, without the necessary lies of party politics. In addition, the chance of gaining personal insight into my enemy, set against the risk of him doing likewise. Well worth that risk. Always it is better to act from knowledge than ignorance." Eric nodded, spread his hands in silent acknowledgment as she continued. "Although, _por favor_, why did you not request such a meeting with the Alliance Chairman?"

Eric leaned forward slightly. "For one, it wasn't an Alliance task force that pirated our convoy. It was American." A flick of his eyes to a nearby OSS agent communicated _exactly_ whose task force it had been. The man himself was unremarkable: about middle aged, thin and dark and precise, with a mustache that looked as if it had been drawn on. He bristled at the unspoken implication hanging in the air.

Hiero was quick to step in. "Excellence, may I introduce General Anton Donati of the Office of Strategic Services."

Donati inclined his head to the Draka Archon, hands clasped behind his back. "Excellence," the Italian said, voice neutral.

Eric returned the courtesy - his people were nothing if not unfailingly polite in formal settings - and returned his attention to Hiero. "To return to yo' question, Madam President... the second is much the same reason you would not have agreed, had Representative Gayner's nominee been sittin' in this chair."

Her eyebrows rose slightly. "I would not compare Chairman Allsworthy to your Militants," she said.

"Not in terms of policy... a certain structural similarity in position on our relative political spectra. Perhaps a similarity in believin' too strongly in our respective national mythologies. Besides, the American President is still rather mo' than first among equals."

It was Hiero's turn to spread her hands silently. _Certain necessary fictions must be maintained even here,_ he read the gesture.

"Turnin' to business," Eric continued. "I must reiterate mah predecessor's protests regardin' the attack upon our convoy, and demand the return of the cargo it was carryin'." Not that it had been too much of a loss in the end, according to the TechSec people in charge of the project at the Prothean - the phonetic pronunciation of the alien race's name discovered in the data core - compound on Mars. The convoy had been carrying only a fraction of the artifacts found within, and more had been discovered since.

"I, in turn, must protest the selfishness of the Domination in withholding such momentous information as the discovery of proof of alien life." The two of them briefly shared a look of perfect understanding. _We both know the dance isn't going anywhere, but the steps must be followed._

In reality, the uncharacteristic American attack upon Domination ships had forced the former into a disclosure of the existence of the Prothean bunker to the Alliance Chairman and Grand Council. _Which leak like a sieves._ Their news media had caught wind of it and jumped on the story, which in turn had gotten it spread to the general Citizenry of the Domination. The mostly atheist Draka had reacted to the news with amazement, but in the end with far more equanimity than the Alliance general public. Every one of their media outlets had run with the story. Who were these mysterious aliens? Where were they now? Were they extinct? Would they return? What impact did they have on humanity's past evolution? What impact would they have on humanity's future?

Every major religion on Earth had been rocked to its core. The small fringe of Interventionary Evolutionists had zealously proclaimed the discovery as proof of their beliefs and had gained large followings. Many existing faiths were trying to incorporate the reality of alien species into their existing mythologies, and most religions in Alliance territory were still trying to reassemble the pieces.

The Domination's Security Directorate, on the other hand, had dealt with the disclosure in a far more controlled fashion. The religious hierarchies of the serfs were scrambling to rewrite the history, creeds, and beliefs under the all-seeing eye of Skull House while the news was being slowly disseminated to the serf population.

Hiero leaned forward in her seat. "In all seriousness, this discovery is both momentous and dangerous. We now know there is alien life out beyond our solar system." Her dark eyes searched his. "Can Earth's children truly afford to be divided as we are?"

Eric laughed harshly. "You Americans have been a lucky people, on the whole... what convenience, to have national interest an' high-soundin' ideals so congruent." He waved his hand briefly. "Forgive a slight bitterness. Moral judgment - that has to be made in the context of political and historical reality, not some imaginary situation where we start with a _tabula rasa_. If'n a Draka thinks of choice at all, it's as constrained within narrow bonds; human beings make history, but they don't make it just as they choose." He laughed again, this time with more genuine humor. "Interestin' question, whether perception is the result or cause of social reality..."

He leaned forward in his seat. "Madam President, remember always that there is no true symmetry between our positions, here. There is an element in the Alliance which seeks to simply grow around and beyond us, reduce us to an irrelevance." She nodded. "This is precisely what much of our strategy has been designed to prevent. The border tensions, the convention we have allowed to grow up that there is no peace beyond Luna... It is you dynamism we fear. The tension inhibits it, forces you into military an' security measures where we can compete mo' easily."

Hiero's mouth clamped in a grim line. "_Si_. So my analysts tell me."

Eric leaned back. "My fathah once said to me, you nation is like you children; loved because they are yours, not necessarily because they deserve it. Our system is the only one we have, the only one we _can_ without destroyin' ourselves. Protheans or not, if we let up and allow the tension to subside, let you dynamism grow unchecked..." He sighed. "A world bound in chains of adamant, that's our legacy."

A stiff nod from the president. "I see. Perhaps if we moved on to other issues of mutual concern then..."

* * *

President Carmen Hiero shook her head as the Draka party exited the dining room of the Exiles Club and made their way outside.

"The poor man," she murmured, in her mother's language.

"Ma'am?" a Secret Service agent said.

"Nothing, Lindholm," she said, and looked over at Donati. The OSS officer met her eyes, his own face grim. He was being groomed to take charge of the desk held for so long by Nathaniel Stoddard in Donovan House, the latter being quietly retired as a sacrificial lamb to mollify the Alliance hierarchy after the 'rogue' OSS attack on the Draka convoy.

"Is it as bad as I think?" she said quietly.

Donati shrugged, with a very Italian gesture. "I believe Archon von Shrakenberg explained it best, Madam President. The Domination can't afford a united front with us." He leaned forward, suddenly looking much older than his years. "The Final War looks unavoidable."


	6. Chapter 6

**SPIN HABITAT SEVEN**

**NEW AMERICA PROJECT**

**CENTRAL BELT, ALLIANCE INTERDICTED ZONE**

**BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF MARS AND JUPITER**

**JANUARY 8, 1991**

Habitat Seven was the largest of the Project's constructs, half a kilometer across and two long; nickel-iron was cheap, and easy to work with big enough mirrors. The former lump of metal-rich rock was a spinning tube, closed at either end, with a glowing cylinder of woven glass filament running down its center. There was atmosphere inside, and the inner surface had been transformed; gravity was .5 G, as much as was practical or necessary. Grass grew in squares of nutrient-rich dust, and hopeful flowers. Individual houses - foamed rock poured into molds - formed neighborhoods; there were dozens of different floor plans.

Cindy Lefarge gathered the last of the dinner dishes and loaded them into the washer set into the countertop. She touched a control and the cylindrical hopper sank back down. A quiet hum sounded through the serving window. The Lefarge living-dining area was open-plan in the manner that had become fashionable in the '70s, when the price of live-in help rose beyond the budgets of the upper middle class. _It always was, here in the Belt,_ she thought with slight cynicism. _Amazing how fast domestic gadgets got invented when it was really necessary._ She picked up the tray with the coffee and carried it around to set on the table.

There were four other dining at Brigadier Lefarge's house that night, three men and one woman, all department heads. Scientists for the most part, or scientific administrators at least, engineers, used to hard-material problems and juggling workers and resources. The work they had been involved with dealt with far more theory than any major scientific project since the Eurasian War. Their goals had dealt with immediate problems, mostly engineering work. Dealing with Prothean technology required real ingenuity.

"All right," Fred said abruptly. Cindy could feel a harshness behind the tone, the same force that had been hag-riding him since he heard of Uncle Nate's forced retirement, and the news of Marya's death on Mars before that. There were lines graven in the heavy-boned face, down from nose to mouth. "It's going on two years since we... obtained," - a short savage smile - "the Prothean technology and data from the Snakes. What have we got?"

There was a period of silence as the department heads marshaled their thoughts and gauged each other to see who would go first. It was a silence possible only because the Lefarges' twin teenage daughters were out with their friends from school, along with a bunch from Habitat Three. Fred preferred to keep the meetings like this, with the small-town atmosphere that had been created among those involved in the Project: an after dinner meeting over coffee.

"Well," began Pedro de Ribeiro as he stroked his salt-and-pepper Imperial Brazilian goatee, "we have not fully translated the Prothean language in the data core, but we estimate full understanding within weeks." Every aspect of the Prothean project had become easier in recent months with the influx of new settlement in the Belt, spurred by official encouragement back dirtside and tales of the fleet that had defeated the Draka convoy.

"What we _have_ translated," the professor continued, "has given us some very interesting roads to follow. What is most interesting to me, however, is the very architecture of the data core itself." His eyes lit as he sat forward, looking across the table to Fred. "Do you recall the conversation we had when we were establishing the infrastructure of this habitat?"

Lefarge frowned as he considered the question, then his face cleared as he remembered. "Back in '83," he nodded. That conversation had involved some circuitous talk about the most secretive of the New America Project's enterprises, the data plague they were developing to infect the embedded compinstruction sets of the Domination's mainbrain computers, the cores.

De Ribeiro beamed, as if proud at the recall of a pupil. "Exactly. Then I was worried that we would have to practically reinvent the art of information systems. Laid out before us in the architecture of this data core is a road map for a far more open system, one in which we can write compinstruction procedures on a perscomp, instead of manufacturing them into analog components at secure facilities and then transported them to the computers that will use them."

"But that would mean... Jesus!" That was Henry Wasser, head of the antimatter drive systems for the _New America_ and her auxiliaries and of late studying the mass effect drives of the two Prothean spaceships that had been included in the convoy. He was the one who worked most closely with the Infosystems Division de Ribeiro directed. "You could copy embedded corepaths and instruction sets over the wires between perscomps! It would be a security nightmare."

The Brazilian nodded. "Exactly! Free flow of information, of ideas, of _concepts_. Here we are relatively free of the security restrictions – if only because we are already imprisoned, in a sense!

"Think also, my colleagues," he continued, "Who would find it more difficult to adjust to such a world where such technology were widespread, us or them?"

Ali Harahap nodded thoughtfully. "Indeed so," he said in his singsong Sumatran accent, taking a drag from a cigarette that smelled sharply of cloves and exhaling. "Their Security Directorate would have nightmares about such an open system, a... network of perscomps."

Lefarge rapped the table. "Gentlemen, please. Let's try to keep the extrapolation to a minimum, shall we?" His tone was both amused and resigned; he was used to herding their more fanciful flights during these meetings. "Doctor Wasser, how are things on your end?"

Wasser cleared his throat and took a quick drink of his coffee, then leaned back in his chair, holding the ceramic cup's handle with one hand. "The stockpile of that alien element is obviously the secret behind how the mass effect core works. As far as we can tell, it defies conventional measurement on the periodic table. It has no protons in the nucleus of it's atoms, and therefore no atomic number. Because of this we've been informally calling it 'element zero'."

The propulsion drive expert set his coffee down and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "This stuff is amazing, really. Running an electrical current through it causes it to release dark energy which can then be manipulated by the core into a mass effect field. A positively charged current increases mass within the field, while a negatively charged one decreases it. The only downside is that the stockpile we seized from the Draka convoy is all we have. It doesn't appear to be a widely occurring element, and the Protheans apparently refined it into the pure state the Snakes found it in."

Lefarge frowned. "So it has a finite fuel source that we have very little of?"

Wasser nodded. "As it is, yes. San Francisco is moving to give our prospecting ships some compinstruction 'upgrades' that we're saying increases their sensitivity, but will allow for them to detect element zero wherever it might be in our solar system. It isn't a complete loss as it is, anyway. Even without a large stockpile, we can do some critical research into a faster-than-light drive, maybe even build our own mass effect core to retrofit into one of _New America_'s auxiliaries."

Lefarge felt a pain building in the back of his neck, spreading up into his skull. "Wait. We have a small amount of this element zero from the convoy. Does this mean the Snakes have more of it?"

Wasser frowned and clasped his hands together. "Unfortunately, yes."

"Then that means they could develop a faster-than-light mass effect drive as well," Lefarge said, and closed his eyes as he felt his stomach lurch. "That means... Alpha Centauri won't be as out of reach as we thought it would be. _New America_ is now essentially useless as originally planned."

There was a discomfited shuffling around the table as that implication sunk in. Wasser, however, shot de Ribeiro a questioning look and, after a moment, the Brazilian professor nodded.

"We've found references to something else in the Prothean data cache," de Ribeiro began. "Another way to travel faster-than-light besides a mass effect drive. They speak of a network of devices called mass relays..."

* * *

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**NOVEMBER 10, 1991**

"Five minutes," the desk said.

Eric von Shrakenberg sighed and seated himself, feeling a little out of place. This shape of carved yellowwood and Zambezi teak... how many Occupation Day addresses had he seen it in, from the other side? On film back during the Eurasian War, on screens of gradually increasing clarity since. _Wotan, fifty years!_ he thought, looking around the big room. Not overwhelming, although the view was spectacular, when the curtains were open; the dome of the House of Assembly was about half a kilometer away. History-drenched enough for anybody, he supposed, thinking of the decisions made here.

"Incoming signal," the speaker said.

"Receive."

A spot of light appeared at head-height beyond the desk. A line framed it, expanding outward until it outlined a rectangle three meters by three; the central spot faded, and then the rectangle blinked out of existence. Replacing it was a slightly transparent holographic window into the interior of Command Central in Nova Virconium, the primary Draka settlement on Mars. _Genuine progress, for a change,_ Eric thought. It was, ironically, the very system that had been proposed for the connection to the American President in Donovan House, now used as a direct communication between the Archon and the Commandant-Governor of Mars, the second most important position in the Domination since the discovery of the Prothean bunker.

"Service to the State," Beauregard Rohm said, bringing his right fist to chest in a formal military salute.

"Glory to the Race," he replied, inclining his head. The new Commandant-Governor was a 'native' Martian, someone elevated from the ranks of the War Directorate personnel already there rather than someone appointed from Earth. He had the usual leopard-gracefulness of a Draka Citizen, close-cropped hair bright copper and pale skin highlighting the level blue-eyed gaze.

"Excellence," the broad-built man in front of the desk said in his turn, also with a formal salute.

"Strategos-Professor Snappdove. Always good to see you," Eric replied, a smile lighting his features.

"Thank you, Excellence," Snappdove replied as the two men on Mars took their seats.

"Gentlemen," the Archon said, "apprise me of yo' progress regardin' the Prothean technology."

"Excellence, we have made great strides in understandin' the mass effect drive. The element that fuels the mass effect core-"

An hour into the briefing, Eric frowned as he leaned back. "This computer architecture sounds troublin'. The Yankees have always excelled over us at electronics. If'n I understand this right this is not only another leg up fo' them, but a significant paradigm shift in their favor."

"I'm afraid so, Excellence," Snappdove replied. "Security is already complainin' that too many serfs have access to computers. If we had them networked together like the Prothean architecture points to..."

Eric felt a chill run down his spine. Serf revolts were bad enough as localized events. If they were able to dupe Security and organize on a Domination-wide level using such a network...

"Not t'mention the espionage opportunities this would afford the Yankees," Rohm put in. "As you say, Excellence, they're better at that side of things than we are."

The Archon sighed and shook his head. "Give me some good news, gentlemen."

"My colleagues in the weapons division have been brainstormin' some interestin' ideas." Snappdove smiled in enthusiasm as he leaned forward in his seat. "They're lookin' at mass accelerator technology to create better firearms of all sizes. We're lookin' at a possible T-8 model for the Holbars assault rifle.

"A mass accelerator," be continued, "propels a solid metal slug usin' precisely controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. Fo' example, they're lookin' at an assault rifle storin' a dense block of metal which would have bullets the size of a grain of sand shaved off, decrease its mass with a mass effect field, and fire it at supersonic velocities. This would give it a near limitless amount of ammunition compared to the T-7's prefragmented caseless variety. They also lookin' at a cannon-sized version fo' fighting vehicles."

"Sounds too good to be true," Eric replied. He'd heard others in TechSec promise the moon and the stars to the soldiers who actually had to put their boots on the battlefield. "What're the drawbacks?"

"Well," Snappdove replied reluctantly, "models show there are goin' to be some overheatin' problems. However, that's the case with all firearms. With fire discipline I shouldn't foresee any real problems. Maybe throw in an automatic cool off brake if someone sprays they bullets around too much."

The professor scooted forward slightly in his chair as he continued. "There's another interestin' concept they're comin' up with on the defensive side of things as well. Defensive shields fo' everythin' from spaceships to a soldier's armor."

Eric's eyebrows rose sharply. "How in Wotan's name are you gonna manage _that?_"

The strategos smiled. "To use the technically correct term, they'd be mo' like kinetic barriers. Repulsive mass effect fields projected from emitters that could deflect small objects travelin' at rapid velocities. This would afford protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allow someone to sit down without knockin' away they chair."

"That would prove embarrassing," Eric replied dryly, to a general round of chuckles. "Now," he continued, his expression becoming serious, "what have you uncovered about the murder of my niece?"

An uneasy look passed between the two men on the other side of the holographic window. The murder of Yolande Ingolfsson by her Yankee-born serf hadn't been widely reported and quickly hushed up by the Security Directorate. Despite that, the Archon's late niece's image had been tarnished by the event, and by extension some of it had rubbed off onto him as well. It was one reason why the last Archonal election had been far closer than Eric had found comfortable.

"Actually, Excellence," Rohm slowly began, "we made a breakthrough on that. The serf, Marya E77A1422, had some social contacts among the Command Central office workers. Security discovered that she'd had regular, if sparse, contact with a priest." A hesitation. "Excellence... it's lookin' like he was reportin' to an OSS frequency."

Eric von Shrakenberg's face became unreadable. After a long moment of silence, he spoke. "Are you tellin' me, Commandant-Governor, that the Yankees killed my niece?"

"It, ah, it appears so," Rohm replied, a dew of sweat on his brow.

"I see. Thank you, gentlemen. We shall speak again at the usual time." The window blinked out immediately after the parting salutes and pleasantries.

Eric stared out the window at the Archona skyline. It was bad enough with the Alliance poised to overtake the Domination in understanding the Protheans' technology. _That's enough to pursue... drastic measures to preserve mah nation and mah people. But killin' my niece, my _blood_..._

The Final War was going to happen. He had his duty as Archon of the Domination of the Draka. But now it was more than that. Whatever else he might be, he was a von Shrakenberg.


	7. Chapter 7

I'd like to thank everyone for their comments! I realize there are people on both sides of the 'Great Draka Divide', and it's my hope that all of you will continue following this story as it progresses onward. I'm trying to be as realistic as possible with the universe as S.M. Stirling has provided it and allowing it to progress with no bias towards one side or the other as Mass Effect's Prothean bunker and its tech sends ripples outward, changing things here and there.

Be sure to let me know if you are following this, because comments have been known to spur me to faster writing - provided that Real Life doesn't get in the way, of course.

* * *

**ABOARD ASFS _INDEFATIGABLE_**

**NEAR PLUTO**

**SEPTEMBER 30, 1997**

"Topographical scans complete, sir."

"Very good. Have the boys down in cryptography encode and compress the information for transmission back to Earth." Robert Kunzman, captain of the _Indefatigable_, gave the new map of the surface of Pluto a cursory scan before blanking it from his screen. _I'll give it a closer look later._

He had always liked maps and globes as a kid, had found the newer ones of the other planets, moons and asteroids published as he grew up endlessly fascinating. A childhood memory came back: looking at a world map pulled down over the blackboard in school, the large oval showing the oceans and the continents divided into the two superpowers of the Alliance for Democracy and the Domination of the Draka. Remembering his lessons about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue and how the world was round and looking at the map in a new light, wondering: _what's on the other side, then?_

Kunzman smiled to himself at the memory, then refocused himself back to the present. "Are we receiving from the probes?"

"Yes, sir," the Sensor Officer reported. "Transmission from orbiters are loud and clear. Landers and rovers are loud and clear; onboard A.I.s have begun autonomous survey missions."

"Right then," the captain said, leaning back in his crashcouch. "Phase One of the planetary survey is complete. We'll move on to the moons while the probes gather their data, then we'll swing back to record it. Helmsman, calculate burn to Charon."

Kunzman frowned as the mainbrain computer began running the numbers. He was glad to be out on the edges of the solar system, mapping some of its final unexplored bodies. _But why _are_ we way out here?_ The space effort, for both sides in the Protracted Struggle, had been about setting up strategic bases and colonies to outposition the other in the event of the Final War, or laying claim to deposits of ores and water ice and, more recently, helium-3 to power fusion reactors. _The Snakes dominate the gas-giant moons and that's one heck of an obstacle between here and the Belt, not to mention the distances involved. Can the trans-Neptunian region really be self-sufficient?_ It had plenty of large rocks – some were what were being termed 'dwarf planets' – and ices but it covered an area twenty times the size of the Belt, from beyond the orbit of Neptune out to 55 AU from the Sun.

"Calculations complete, sir."

"Execute drive burn."

"Has to have something to do with the Protheans," he muttered under his breath as the ship surged beneath him. He had been as awestruck as everyone else when the news of the alien bunker on Mars had finally been released to the public, with panic following right on its heels. The fourth planet was wholly under the control of the Domination, and news of the successful capture of the Draka convoy full of Prothean artifacts had left a lot of people across the Alliance feeling mixed. On the one hand, it was like something the Snakes would do – had, in fact, _been_ doing for years – and the Alliance for Democracy was supposed to be the 'Good Guys'. _On the other, they sure as hell weren't going to share it with us, and they'd use that Prothean tech to put us all under the Yoke at the first opportunity._ 'Ugly, but necessary' had been the consensus of the whole affair.

Indefatigable_ having one of these new mirror-matter powered drives probably helps._ The new cruiser was based on the auxiliaries built for the _New America_ back in the Belt. _Beats the hell out of the old pulsedrives. Faster _and_ has more range._ Even the Draka were fielding them now after the Belt task force had run rings around their convoy. _Maybe that's why we're out this far._ The solar system as a whole wasn't as large as it used to be.

Eight hours later, the mainbrain's calculated burn had put them into a stable orbit around Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Kunzman watched the viewer screen showing the outside camera view of the icy surface below. Already their sensors had confirmed that much of the surface was made up of water ice, instead of the more volatile nitrogen and methane ices that covered the surface of Pluto. _ That alone make a base out here possible,_ he thought. _Build a fusion reactor for energy to replace the distant Sun, and we just might be able to set up a self-sufficient colony._ _Helium-3 fuel would be the big bottleneck, but perhaps somewhere else in the trans-Neptunian region-_

"Sir, the lander probes are sending back some strange readings."

Brought out of his reverie, the captain looked over at the Sensor Officer. "What have you got?"

"The seismic measurements profile ice with relatively minute amounts of rock in the crust, but the core is much more dense than expected." A frown. "Too dense to be rock... and the shape is extremely irregular. I'll have the landers run a sequential seismic profile to see if we can get a better idea."

Several hours later, Kunzman was marveling at the massive shape the probes had revealed buried deep beneath the ice of Charon. _No, that thing _is_ Charon, the ice is just covering it! Which means..._

"That's no moon."

* * *

**ABOARD ASFS _YAMATO_**

**NEW AMERICA PROJECT**

**CENTRAL BELT, ALLIANCE INTERDICTED ZONE**

**OCTOBER 22, 1997**

"Bring the FTL drive core online."

There was a loud hum as the outer ring of the machine began to spin, then a low thrumming sound as it picked up speed. Frederick Lefarge winced involuntarily at the first snap of energy between the three metal arms in the center of the device; a look at Henry Wasser's calm demeanor reassured him that this was normal.

"Levels are looking good."

The air between the three arms began to subtly waver, as if the light were being ever so slightly distorted as it passed through. Slowly the visual effect began to grow, picking up speed as it built up until it was an amorphous blob about a meter across. Bolts of blue-white energy coursed over the nearly invisible phenomenon, growing in number until they became a general glow formed along the outside of it.

"Drive core is online. Good work, people."

There were smiles and nods among some of the men and women in white labcoats, while others continued to tap away at their terminals after a brief acknowledgment. Lefarge approved of the latter in the abstract, but was still left wondering how they had become so inured to such a sight. _Those detached types are able to focus more on their projects,_ he thought, _but with some of them there's something a little... off._ Others, he knew, merely lacked social graces but remained valuable nevertheless.

Wasser was smiling tightly as he approached the OSS head of the Project. "That's the fourth one, Brigadier. Are you sure we can't install any more? I'm sure I can refine the design to generate more output."

Lefarge shook his head. "Four FTL ships is all we can afford at the moment, Doctor. Further research will have to be done in the lab. Most of our resources are going into upgrading the _New America's_ weapons and defensive systems." Since building and installing an FTL drive sufficient to move the mass of the starship was deemed prohibitive, current doctrine had moves towards turning it into a mobile fortress from which its faster auxiliaries could base themselves.

Wasser's face fell, but he nodded reluctantly and followed in Frederick's wake as he led the two of them out of the engineering section. Technically neither of them had had to be there when the core was brought online, but Wasser had taken to mass effect drive with the zeal of a convert. In the other's case, it was sheerly a desire to witness the spectacle with his own eyes. The other three cores had been brought online from afar, with the distances between them and their tenders closing with each activation.

The other department heads were waiting for them in the conference room when they arrived. Two of them were standing near the back wall, squeeze bulbs of coffee in their hands. The coffee machine was going, scenting the air; it looked odd compared to its terrestrial counterpart, but you did have to _push_ the water through here. The two looked over as the newcomers floated in and went to their chairs, strapping themselves into them.

"Ladies, gentlemen, glad you could all make it," Lefarge began as he fastened his chair's seatbelt. "We've all worked together for... at least a decade now. You've all shown that you are willing to cut yourselves off from the outside world to work on the Project in its various phases." He paused, looked down at his hands for a moment. "I think most of you who haven't been told have guessed; the _New America_ was not the only purpose of the Project." He turned to de Ribeiro. "Fill them in, Professor."

"We all know we have been building a starship," he began stroking his goatee, "with surprising success – although the only way to test it is to undertake the voyage. Scarcely a low-risk method! We have also become the primary research center into the Protheans' technology."

Patricia Hayato nodded. "We've all gotten used to secret projects," she said. "Since the war, every five years another group of scientists drops out of sight. The Los Alamos Project pattern. Mistaken, in my opinion. It sacrifices long-term to short-term; more suitable for wartime than the Protracted Struggle."

De Ribeiro inclined his head graciously. "What is the best disguise? A disguise that is no disguise at all. Here we hid the _New America_ within a series of concentric shells of secret projects, each one genuine. More layers were peeled away than we would have liked following the unmasking of _New America's_ auxiliaries, but within the Prothean research and the _New America_ itself, the ultimate secret. A weapon."

Hayato threw up her hands. "Oh, no, not some superbomb!" Everyone else winced slightly; the rain of fission weapons that had brought down the Empire of Japan toward the end of the Eurasian War was still a sensitive subject. "Just what we need, more firepower. What have you discovered, a way to make the sun go nova?"

Lefarge rapped sharply on the table. "Ladies, gentlemen, we've all been cooped up with each other so long our arguments have gotten repetitive. Let the professor speak, please."

The Brazilian examined his fingertips. "We've developed a weapon that is no weapon – which should appeal to you, my dear colleague." Hayato flushed, she took neo-Zen more seriously than the founders of that remarkably playful philosophy might have wished. "You were quite right; bigger and better means of destruction have reached a point of self-defeating futility. But consider what _controls_ those weapons."

"Data plague," Wasser said. "I always did think you had too much facility for what we needed."

De Ribeiro beamed. "Exactly." A sip of coffee. "To be more precise, contamination of the embedded compinstruction sets of mainbrain computers. It was unleashed several months ago. It spreads slowly, from one manufacturing center to another, as improved instruction-sets are handed out. In the event of war – he grinned – "the Draka will find their machines... rebellious."

"And when enough are infected, the Alliance will move." Lefarge looked around the table. "We've been slowly positioning our forces to be ready when the time comes." A frown. "Every indication of the way _they've _configured _their_ off-Earth forces, every intuition I've built up about Draka behavior, tells me the Snakes have some sort of ace in the hole comparable to us. It's a race, and we know for a fact that they won't hesitate a moment once they're ready."

A rustling around the table as the scientists shifted and looked around at each other, their faces grim. "Are we really that close?" That was Colin McKenzie; he was Quebec-Scots, a heavy-construction man. "I mean... I've got kin back on Earth."

"We all do," the security chief said. "The Prothean bunker just threw petroleum onto the fire. We both have its technology now, and we've got a larger free population than they do. Both sides know that, given enough time, we'll overcome the disadvantage of having less to work with than they do and overtake them."

He clasped his hands together. "The war might even start before _either_ side is ready. The mass relay we discovered last month inside Charon, both we and the Snakes are currently working on removing the hundreds of kilometers of ice and frozen debris that's formed a shell around it. No clashes yet – even Charon is large enough that they can keep some distance from each other – but it is a definite flashpoint."

Lefarge looked around the table, meeting each of their gazes in turn. "I thought all of you should know. The Project is _crucial_; we are _not_ going to let the Snakes destroy us here when the war comes. Whatever happens, what we've built here is important to the future of the Alliance for Democracy and the human race.

"Now, any questions?" Silence. "Very well. Meeting adjourned."


	8. Chapter 8

**NOVA VIRCONIUM**

**COMMAND CENTRAL**

**HELLAS PLANITIA, MARS**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**FEBRUARY 3, 1998**

**0600 HOURS**

"Thank you, Ursula." Beauregard Rohm watched the serf's hips work under her skirt as she walked back out of his office, then tore his gaze away and sighed regretfully as he took a sip of his Yirgacheffee Kaffa. He gave a small noise of pleasure in the back of his throat as he let the coffee roll over his tongue. It was a relatively rare blend, but an old friend from school had inherited his family's plantation in the Ethiopian highlands and sent him some bags from time to time.

He set the porcelain cup down and started to reach for the first data-plaque when someone appeared at his doorway. Rohm raised an eyebrow as he took in the black dress uniform of a merarch, then nodded to him.

The merarch approached the desk and brought his right fist to his chest. "Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race."

The formalities out of the way, the merarch produced a sheet of paper and held it out. "Sir, this wire just came in from Archona. Priority one."

The commandant-governor's eyebrows rose slightly as he took the offered sheet, and nodded to the officer. "Very good. Carry on." The merarch saluted and walked out.

Rohm unfolded the paper and quickly scanned through it. Sat still for a long moment, then read through it again. A soft whisper, "Wotan." He reached for the communicator.

"Staff conference, immediate," he said. "Force Condition Seven."

* * *

**CHATEAU RETOUR PLANTATION**

**LOIRE DISTRICT**

**TOURAINE PROVINCE**

**FEBRUARY 3, 1998**

"_Vite, vite,_ keep movin'!" The serf foreman reached out to stop a field-hand family; one of the children was cradling a puppy. "No livestock in the shelter, drop it." The small boy began to cry in bewildered terror.

The bossboys were as ignorant as the rest of the serfs, but they had caught the master's nervousness. Karl von Shrakenberg whistled sharply to catch the man's attention and jerked his head; the foreman's rubber hose fell, and the line began moving again as he waved the serf boy through with his pet.

_Makes no nevermind,_ the master of Chateau Retour thought, watching the long column disappearing into the hillside. He swallowed to moisten a dry throat, and suppressed a shiver as he rolled his shoulders within his silk jacket to relieve a tension building between his shoulder blades. It was a relatively cool winter day in the generally mild Loire Valley. The shelter was burrowed under that hill, quite deep; begun in the late '40s after the excavation and removal of the last one that had been irradiated after an incident involving a Yankee agent infiltrating the naming feast of he and his twin sister Alexandra in 1947. The entrance was disguised as a warehouse, but beyond the broad door and the facade was a long concrete ramp. The elevators were freight-type, and the thousand-odd serfs would be in their emergency quarters in another hour or so. Armorplate doors, and thousands of feet of rock-

_It should be enough, if we have an hour,_ he thought. Nothing but the coded messages over the official net, but you could tell... _I always grudged the money and effort._ Full shelter for all the serfs, sustainable if crowded; fuel cells, air filters, water recyclers, and food enough for three years on strait rations.

He had had just enough time to put most of the farming equipment under wraps; the sealed warehouses held seed grain. There was even room for basic breeding stock, on the upper level.

The last of the field hands passed through, and the overseer looked up from the comp screen by the door. "That's the last of them," she called. Rumbling sounded within, as thick metal sighed home into slots.

Silence fell, eerie and complete. Nothing but the cool wind through the trees, and the tinkle of water from one of the village fountains. He stood in his stirrups and looked around; in the distance was the Great House, an old chateau built in a checkerboard of white stone and red brick, with black Angers-slate roofs; four towers, and a big pool-reservoir behind it with landscaped banks. He was near the Quarters to the east, the cottage roofs almost lost among the trees. Around the manor grounds were blocks of orchard, apple and apricot and peach; dairy pasture down by the river, wheat and corn farther north, and long low slopes of vineyard. Remembering the sign that hung in chains between the front gateposts:

CHATEAU RETOUR PLANTATION

EST. 1945

KARL AND ELIZABETH VON SHRAKENBERG, LANDHOLDERS

Commonplace and infinitely dear. Yesterday his only worry had been the falling price of wheat and the vintage.

"Run one mo' check," he said. "Wouldn't want to leave one of they brats out by mistake." The overseer was taut-nervous herself, but her fingers were steady on the keyboard.

"All of 'em."

"Right." He ran a soothing hand down the neck of his horse as it side-danced with the tension. "Sooo, boy, easy. Now, let's go jump in a hole and pull it in aftah us."

* * *

**DONOVAN HOUSE**

**NEW YORK CITY**

**FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT**

**UNITED STATES OF AMERICA**

**FEBRUARY 4, 1998**

**0700 HOURS**

"Could it be a drill of some sort?" one of the figures in the screen said.

The Conference Room was nearly empty; just the president, and a few of her chief aides there. The Alliance Chairman was in the center of the holoscreen, with the military chiefs and some of the most crucial administrators. In theory the other Alliance heads of government were coequal, but this was still much more than _primus inter pares._

Carmen Hiero forced herself not to sigh in exasperation. "_Amigo,_ they've started closing down factories and evacuating the population to the deep shelters," she said. "Look at the reports; there are abandoned dogs walking through the streets of Alexandria! You think they're doing this – it must be costing them astronomically – for a _drill?_"

Allsworthy tapped his fingers together and looked to one side, toward his pickup of the ACI – Alliance Central Intelligence – chief. Hiero frowned slightly; she thought the chairman tended to rely on his Intelligence people rather too much. _Enough,_ she thought. _Listen._

"Anything congruent? Any reason for it to start _now?_" the chairman said.

The ACI man, a square-jawed Argentine of Welsh descent, frowned and shook his head. "Nothing we can spot on short notice, Mr. Chairman," he said. "Not even anything out by the mass relay excavation at Charon since that clash last month."

Allsworthy grunted, looked down at his hands. Hiero felt herself touched with sympathy, and a moment's gratitude that the final decision was not hers. The life of the planet lay in those palms. "Recommendations?"

The president hesitated, thoughts running through her head. Finally, the ACI commander spoke up. "Sir, whatever has brought this on, even if we _win_ with the present inadequate level of infection in their infosystems, we're talking _hundreds of millions_ of dead. _Everybody,_ if they use Fenris." That was the Domination's doomsday bomb, their final resort to bring the entire Earth down along with them if they were on the verge of utter defeat. "We have to play for time, try and unroot what this is as we ready our forces."

"We're already at Defcon 4," Hiero said. "We should attack immediately."

"Attack." That was Donati, the OSS chief of staff, more decisive than usual.

She sat silent as she listened to the ensuing debate. This was not a committee, could not be, and she had said what she believed... At last the chairman raised a hand for silence.

"We'll present an ultimatum," he said. "Secretary Ferriera, draft an immediate note to the Domination; their mobilization is an intolerable provocation and threat, and we will consider ourselves in a state of war unless they begin withdrawal by exactly" – his eyes went to a clock – "1000 hours tomorrow. General Mashutomo, all Alliance forces to Defcon 5 and proceed on the assumption that hostilities begin as of the expiration of the ultimatum." He looked around. "Any questions?"

Hiero waited until she was sure there would be none, before she spoke. "No. I disagree with this course of action, but we must have discipline or we are truly lost." A weary smile. "And I very much hope I am wrong and you are right, _Senor_ Chairman."

"Roderigo," she said, as the last of the president's council were leaving. "Wait a moment." When they were alone. "Miguel and the grandchildren are still on Ceres. Send a message, tightbeam, priority; _Stay._ He will understand."

* * *

**WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA**

**UNITED STATES OF AMERICA**

**FEBRUARY 4, 1998**

**1500 HOURS**

"Captain Fischer, what the hell _is_ this place?"

The trooper was nervous. They all were, after the sudden Defcon 5 and the scramble of orders that had sent them barging off into the Nantahala Forest, away from any news of what was going on.

Fischer looked up from his maps; they had walked most of the way from Cheoah, up into the hills. The air was cool here in the high Great Smokies even in summer, chill with winter now. The steep mountain ridges were thick with triple-canopy forest, underbrush at chest height, a second layer twice as tall as a man, then hardwoods and pine trees above them.

"It's an old talc mine," the captain said. _They're supposed to be independent-minded,_ he reminded himself. _And they're feeling lost, yanked out of their regular units._ Most of the Rangers were helping with the last crates, up from the disused road and through the carefully run-down entrance. The shielding started a little way beyond that, and then the storerooms and armories. "You married? Close relatives?"

"No, sir," the solder answered. He was in his late teens, with a fluffy brown attempt at a mustache. "Not really."

"Nobody here does," Fischer continued. "And in that cave there's everything we'd need for a long, long time."

The soldier swallowed. "Yessir, I get the picture." The officer noted with pleasure that he didn't ask if there were other redoubts like this. _I suspect so,_ the captain thought. _But neither of us needs to know._ One of the noncoms below called with a quietly menacing displeasure, and the young Ranger saluted and turned to go. That gave him a glimpse of the last contingent, looking unaccustomed to their fatigues and carrying various items of black-boxed electronics.

"_Girls?_" he squeaked, then remembered himself and saluted again.

"Technicians," Fischer said softly to himself, looking up. "Edited out of the comps, like all the rest of us. Unlikely to be missed. Not on paper either, anywhere."

The last troopers were following up the trail, replacing bent branches and disturbed leaves, spraying pheromone neutralizers. He folded the map and tucked it into a shoulder pouch. It was going to create the biggest administrative hassle of all time, getting this set up again when they'd been stood down.

"I hope," he murmured. "I sincerely hope."

* * *

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

**0500 HOURS**

"So." Eric von Shrakenberg looked around the circle of the table. "Is that the consensus?"

Louise Gayner, head of the Militants, snorted and snapped a thumbnail against the crackle finish of her perscomp. The other glanced sidelong at each other; the Supreme General Staff representatives, the Directors of War and Security, the Council members. No teleconferencing, not for this. A dozen human beings, and they were all those who must be consulted in this matter.

Silence. Nods.

The Archon looked down at his fingers. _All my life I've wanted to set us free,_ he thought. _Free from a way of life based on death. Now my only chance of it is to inflict more death than the combined totals of every despot and warlord in the whole mad-dog slaughterhouse we call human history._ Now it had come down to this, the whole of human history narrowing down to this point. Ten thousand generations, living, rearing their children, working, dreaming, going down to dust, and now... He would say the words, and they would lie like a sword across all time, no matter the outcome. If there were humans at all, a generation hence, they would call this the decisive moment. The time when the Stone Dogs had reached acceptable saturation. The ultimate power, and in his hands.

It would be so easy to blame the fault of the situation devolving down to this moment on the Protheans, leaving their bunker behind on Mars for a humanity bitterly divided in two to find fifty thousand years later. _But I'd be deluding myself._ The Protracted Struggle, the Domination's policy of aggressive neutrality, the steadfast moralism of the Alliance, the bitterness of the Draka national consciousness made up of those rejected by the rest of Western civilization. _I suppose it was inevitable._

He could feel the cold carnivore eyes on him. _A leader is someone who manages to keep ahead of the pack,_ he knew bitterly. There was exactly one practical choice he could make, within the iron framework of the Domination's logic, and the Draka were nothing if not a practical people. Or he could refuse it, and the only difference would be that he would be safely dead in twenty minutes. For a split second's brief temptation he wished he could; it would spare him the consequences at least.

_No. At seventh and last, I _am_ a von Shrakenberg, and I have my duty._ Besides that, if nothing else it would give Gayner too much pleasure.

"Activate the Stone Dogs," he said; his voice had the blank dispassion of a recording. "Force Condition Eight. Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race," came the reply. There was another brief pause, as if the men and women gathered around the table were caught in the huge inertia of history, the avalanche they were about to unloose. Then they rose and left, one by one.


	9. Chapter 9

**DOMINATION SPACE COMMAND PLATFORM _MOURNBLADE_**

**LOW EARTH ORBIT**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

**0900 HOURS**

The commander of the battle platform looked up sharply. "That's the code," he said. His second nodded, confirming. They were in the center of the platform, and the Chiliarch allowed himself a moment's pride; this was the newest and best of Space Command's orbital fists.

"Initiate Zebra," he said.

There was heavy tension on the command bridge, but no confusion, no panic. This was what they had trained long years for; if any of the operators at their consoles were thinking of homes and families below, it made no difference to the cool professionalism of their teamwork.

"Preparin' fo' launch," the Weapons Officer said.

The commander touched his screen.

[Detonation sequence activated]

"What the _fuck_ – that's not the launch protocol." There was controlled alarm in his voice. "Weapons, pull that sequence!"

Frantic activity. "Suh, it's not responding. The central comp's not acceptin' input."

[Ten seconds]

"Dump the core, over to dispersed operation." A sound of protest from the Infosystems Officer; that would reduce their combat capacity by nine-tenths. "Do it, do it _now_."

"Initiatin'... suh, it won't respond. Null board."

"Get in there and slag the core, physically, now."

[Seven seconds]

Fingers were prying at the access panels. Hands tore bunches of wire free, and sparks flickered blue.

[Five seconds]

Sections of screen were going dark. He could see the globes of fire rising and flattening against the upper atmosphere, down below on Earth. Vortexes of black cloud were gathering.

[Three seconds]

Even now there was no panic. Desperate effort... _Impossible,_ he decided. The Chiliarch closed his eyes, called up a certain day. He was small again, and his father was lifting him...

[Two seconds]

...up so high toward the tree...

[One second]

...with Mother smiling, and...

[Detonation]

* * *

**DONOVAN HOUSE DEEP SHELTER**

**FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT**

**NEW YORK CITY**

**UNITED STATES OF AMERICA**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

"This had better be worth it, _compadre,_" Carmen Hiero said, fastening her robe. It was the early hours of the morning, and she reached grumpily for the coffee. Then she saw her aide's face, and gulped without tasting. "Something more about those broadcasts?"

"No, still just harmless modulated signals," the aide said. "But there's something else... Madam President, the chairman's gone to the Denver War Room." Thousands of feet under a mountain; she felt something clutch at her windpipe. That was where the real decisions would be made, as was right and proper; the Alliance was sovereign, not the member states. "Please, the briefing's being prepared." It was a short walk to the War Room; even after all these years, she still found the salutes a little incongruous for an elderly Sonoran lady in a housecoat.

"What's the status?" she asked, sinking into the command chair. There was a tired smell of cigarettes and stale coffee, under the artificial freshness.

"They've gone to Force Condition Eight," the general said. "Full mobilization. Evacuations in progress; nearly complete, in fact. Nothing overt, not yet; we're matching, of course. No panic..." Unspoken, the knowledge that the civil defense measures were inadequate passed between them. _Yes, yes, General. I did my best. Pray that we will not see how far short of enough that is._

"And they're continuing that crazy broadcasting. The experts say the only thing it's going to affect is the homing sense of pigeons. Evidently that's in the same range, planetary magnetism or some such."

Hiero nodded. "Get me Orbital One." Reason fought with sick dread. It made no _sense_; the balance had not changed. Von Shrakenberg was still in power over there, and still a rational man, for a Draka. They had been counting on that, on him keeping the Militants out until the Alliance was ready...

"Madam President, we're having a little trouble with the link to Orbital One," the comtech said, puzzled. "The signal's odd."

The communications desk of the orbital battle station came on, but there was no one behind it. Silence, then a flicker. Then the image on the screen jumped, to the command desk. A man turned to look at them, and Carmen Hiero crossed herself reflexively. There were screams, and one of the techs started vomiting on her console. The man on the screen wore the uniform of an Alliance general; there were deep nail gouges down the side of his face.

"_Urr,_" he said, advancing on the screen pickup. They could see the body behind him, broken and floating in the zero-G chamber. Little else, too much blood was coming from the throat. More floated around the general's mouth. "_Aaaaa._" The mouth swelled enormous, and a slick grating sound came through the speakers; the sound of teeth on a crystal sandwhich. The general was trying to gnaw his way to the command room on Earth.

Below her in the War Room the tech was screaming again, but now he was standing, tearing out handfuls of his hair. The president lifted her hands against the sight, and the fingers turned on her. They smiled, showing their fangs. Burrowed towards her face and began to feed, smiling.

_Pain._ That was the first thought. Then, absurdly: _So this is what madness is._

She stood, floated upward, landed on her feet that rooted themselves deeper than the world. That was terrible, because she must run, she must hide. The _Anglo_ girls at Mount Holyoke had sprinkled brown sugar over her sheets again, and-

-She was walking down the corridor toward the elevators, and the wall kissed her shoulder wetly. A tech was kneeling in a corner, hands locked around her feet, shivering with a tremor that sent waves of blue into the air in time with her whimper.

Hiero reached the elevator and keyed for the surface. It shot upward and inward, compressing her into a fetal curl that spat her out into the corridor. Tissue and fragments flowed together and she crawled along a carpet that moaned in pain and writhed away from her. Something grabbed her and jerked her upright. Insect-stick limbs, oval body, buzzing wings, centered in a face she knew. _What is this monster doing with Roderigo's face?_ she thought, and felt rage seep wetly out of her stomach. Words spattered around her, heavy with evil oils. She lunged forward and it ran, ran before her out onto a balcony beneath a sky that shivered and thundered.

Light blossomed, and there was a moment of total clarity as her melted eyeballs ran down her cheeks. Then-

* * *

**SEABED, ANGOLAN ABYSSAL PLAIN**

**_MALVINA_ SSN-44**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

**1005 HOURS**

"Damned fragmentary, Captain," the Exec said. The lines were scrolling up the screen were the longwave relay from Hawaii. "What the hell does that mean?"

Commodore Wanda Jackson rubbed one hand across the other. She felt a little off, as if things were blurring at the edges. _Christ, I can't be coming down with the flu _now_ of all times._ "It's completely garbled."

She read through the report once and then again, then turned her head to look at the Exec. Her hand reached out and she felt warm wetness on her hand as the red began singing. The Exec flailed away from her, screeching and making the air taste like yellow and chocolate chip cookies, just like her mother baked when she was a little girl. She lunged after him as screams began reverberating through the hull.

Fifteen minutes later, the metal teardrop, the finest class of submarine the Alliance had ever built, veered downward and plunged into the seabed, its hypervelocity sea skimmers with multiple warheads still in their tubes.

* * *

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

**1700 HOURS**

"Excellence, they're getting some of the birds away," the liaison officer said pleadingly. "Please, it's important that you get to the shelter."

Eric von Shrakenberg shook his head. "We didn't expect to disable all the submarine launchers," he said quietly. "But if they get Archona, then it's pointless anyway. I'll live or die with my city... Call it an old man's fancy. Status report."

The Palace infosystem was excellent. Not that he was in the command loop, of course. Today he was a spectator.

_Have I ever been anything else?_ He thought wearily. The lines traced over the globe. Somewhere outside there was a mammoth _crack_, like thunder. Manmade thunder, a laser burning a trail of ionization through the atmosphere, and a particle beam following it.

"We got the sub!" someone shouted. Lines were spearing out from somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope. "Two skimmers away." Hypervelocity, low level. "Sweet mercy of the White Christ, that's _Mournblade's_ sector."

"The close-in will stop it... One down. Come on, baby, come on... Two!" A collective sigh of relief. "That damn near got Capetown."

"Status," he said, without opening eyelids that felt heavier than worlds.

"Excellence, we've lost... Wotan, we've lost a quarter of the discrete platforms out to L-5. Alliance, ninety percent down an' falling fast. Freya bless, Excellence, if it hadn't been fo' Stone Dogs" - a quaver, hastily suppressed – "there wouldn't be anythin' _left_, Excellence."

Another stone-shaking roar of manmade thunder through the walls. Eyes darted to the screens, relaxed; the last salvo had been at low-orbit targets, ones that were unlikely to respond. Eric forced his eyes open, onto the screens. Forced his mind to paint the full picture of what the bloodless schematics meant, through the hour that followed. _Your doing. Your responsibility._

A man was cursing softly. "Oh, shit, oh, shit, that's Shanghai. Penetrator."

"Northern hemisphere stations report high-incidence cloud cover-"

"I don't believe it," somebody said. Eric looked up; that had been soft awe, not the hard control that had settled on most. "London's gone."

Eric slammed a hand down on the arm of his chair. "Who ordered that? Get me their name!"

"Excellence—" the operator looked back over his shoulder; the New Race control of hormone levels must have slipped, inattention, because there was a sheen of moisture across his forehead. "Excellence, they did it themselves."

Eric sighed and sat back, reluctantly letting go the balm of anger. "It'll happen, if you inflict insanity on those in charge of nuclear weapons," he said quietly.

"Multiple detonation, Japan." A toneless voice, lost in procedure. "High-yield groundbursts. Sublevel." A pause. "Jacketed bombs. Prelim'nry sensor data indicate radioactivity-"

The Archon listened through the figures. "Schematic on distribution, given projected wind patterns," he said. "Give me an intensity cline, geography an' timewise." The deep lines beside his beak nose sank a little deeper as the maps twisted themselves. "Note to Plannin' Board: We'll probably have to evacuate the survivin' shelters from the Korean Peninsula up through the Amur Valley, minimum. Draw up estimates." The Japanese had been true to their tradition, and had taken a good deal more with them to the land of the _kami_ than their home islands. _They never liked the Koreans, anyhow,_ he thought.

Minutes stretched into hours, as the quiet voices and screens reported. The thunder spoke less often now, outside; more of it was being directed offensively, into space, to make up for battle stations left derelict. More and more his eyes went to the screens that showed the cumulative effects, graphs rising steadily towards the red lines that represented estimates of what the mother planet's biosphere could stand. _Conservative estimates... we think,_ he reflected.

At last he spoke. "Strategos, a directive to the Supreme General Staff. No mo' fusion weapons within the atmosphere. Kinetic energy bombardment only, on Priority Three targets and above." Active military installations. "Throw rocks at them."

"Excellence—" A glance of protest from the Staff's representative.

Suddenly Eric felt life return, salt-bitter but strong. "Gods damn yo, that's _our planet_ you fuckin' over, woman!" A dot expanded over the Hawaiian Islands. "There goes twenty-five percent of Earth's launch capacity! Do it. Get them on the blower, do it!" _What's a few million lives in this charnel house?_ he asked himself mockingly. _Go on, finish the job._

"If only it were that easy," he muttered to himself. "If only." Aloud: "I'm goin' to catch some sleep." Chemicals would ensure that, and these days they could bring true rest. _Whether you deserve it or not._ "Wake me immediately if we get any substantial info'mation on the translunar situation."

Even this day had to end, sometime.

* * *

**ABOARD ASFS _SACAJAWEA_**

**CENTRAL BELT, ALLIANCE INTERDICTED ZONE**

**FEBRUARY 5, 1998**

"Hit on starboard hull," a voice called. "Kinetic barriers holding steady."

"Evasive maneuvers." That was Ibrahim Kurasaka, face tightly composed as his hands gripped the arms of his command chair.

Frederick Lefarge swallowed thickly as he watched trajectories change on the plotting console in front of him with a speed that would have been unimaginable a mere decade before. _Good god, these mass effect drives have speed!_ he thought. There were five other marks able to keep pace with the _Sacajawea_: the _Columbus,_ the _Yamato,_ the _Alaungpaya,_ and those two damnable Snake FTL ships that were leading the raid against Ceres. Most of the sublight ships on both sides, mirror-matter and the antiquated pulsedrives, had already been destroyed or withdrawn from the battle zone; against ships with FTL drives, their performance was as if someone had nailed their feet to the floor.

"Not the only thing running slower than it should," he muttered. The last hit had been a nigh miraculous event even though the barriers had shrugged it off. One thing both sides were rapidly discovering was that sublight weapons – which consisted of most of both the Alliance's and Domination's arsenals – were woefully inadequate for firing at an FTL ship. Only beam weapons seemed to have half a chance, but they were still underpowered for ship combat. What it all amounted down to were these six ships dancing around like crazed hummingbirds firing off weapons that moved at a relatively glacial pace.

The answer was obvious to the scientists: build weapons based on Prothean technology. That required generating mass effect fields, however, which in turn required element zero. _Which we have too damn little of,_ Lefarge thought. _The only supply in the entire solar system comes from the Prothean equivalent of a research outpost, and both we and the Snakes are trying to use it to fight a war!_ Something had to give eventually, and this farce of a ship-to-ship battle was the result.

"Sir, I think I have an idea." Both Lefarge and Kurasaka looked over at the young officer manning another plotting console. He was a lean young man in his early twenties, with a surprisingly low and gravelly voice for such a frame.

The Exec's brows came together, and his scowl was fearsome. "Ensign, you are out of line—"

"Wait." Kurasaka held up a hand. "Go on, what is it, son?"

The young man took a deep breath through his nose, then nodded once before he began speaking. When he was done, Lefarge and Kurasaka exchanged a look.

"Risky," the ship's captain remarked.

"We can't just keep flying around like this indefinitely," Lefarge replied, "and we have to show the Snakes that the Belt is _ours._ I say we try it."

A moment's hesitation, then Kurasaka nodded and started issuing orders. "Send communication back to the Project. We need them to—"

* * *

Caroline McAlistair, chiliarch of the DASCS _Phaeton_, had a scowl on her face as she watched the viewer. Distant Ceres flashed through the frame every so often, as did the flashes of Yankee ships and the _Arjuna_ as they banked and spun around each other in something akin more to an in-atmosphere dogfight than the ship-to-ship combat she was used to. _Which would be more effective if I was the one at the stick with weapons under my thumb,_ she thought. Relaying orders to the pilot and the Weapons Officer cost too much time in the rapidly changing circumstances of mass effect ship combat.

She had led this task force from the Fleet in orbit around Mars in the hope of destroying the center of the Alliance's power in the Ceres would have also brought immeasurable glory, making her a hero of the Final War that brought the solar system under the dominion of the Race. _But these damnyankee FTL ships won't give me a clear shot!_ she thought, clenching her fingers in impotent rage on the arms of her crashcouch.

"Pickin' up a new energy signature, Chiliarch," the sensor officer said. "Wotan, it's a big one!" His voice was startled, jolted enough out of his usual self-control to make the off-hand remark.

Caroline leaned forward slightly. "What kind?"

"Mirror-matter drive, looks like, but much bigger'n any known Alliance vessel."

"The starship." The chiliarch's lips peeled back in a hunter's grin. "It's they starship." The _New America_ had long been the Alliance's open secret, something they never acknowledged but everyone knew they'd had ever since its auxiliaries had raided the Draka's Prothean convoy back in '89. _If I take that thing out..._ "Where's it at?"

"Deeper into their interdicted zone, located at..." He rattled off the coordinates; Caroline considered: _Still has a sublight drive, so they haven't upgraded the thing since they started buildin' it before the bunker on Mars was discovered. We'll run rings round the thing._

"Prepare to break off engagement with they FTL ships and make a run on the starship." She knew the Yankee auxiliaries would likely try to prevent the destruction of their mothership. _One good strike and then break off to avoid getting caught up in another dogfight oughta do it._ It wasn't as if their weapons would be able to catch up to them from behind in a chase, as this whole mess had proven. "Target weapons on the drive, then break wide." An uncontrolled anti-matter/matter reaction should be enough to destroy the ship _and_ the facility it was launching from. _Maybe even a bit mo' of the surroundin' area,_ she thought with a silent giggle.

The pilot waited for an opportune moment, then pulled an Immelmann turn that sent them hurtling in the opposite direction, straight towards the _New America_. As always, the speed of the mass effect drive was startling; in an astonishingly small amount of time, tens of thousands of kilometers disappeared and the starship came within sight. It was a huge cylinder with the ball of a crew module at the front end with a rotating wheel to simulate gravity just behind it, while at the rear was the long stalk of a boom that connected the cup-shaped mirror-matter reaction drive to the main body of the ship.

_Freya, that's big._ The scale seemed more like a project her people would have pursued. _'Course, they built the thing to go interstellar distances at sublight speeds. I s'pose it _has_ to be big to carry enough to make a colony on the other end worthwhile._

"Only one Yankee ship's pursuin', Chiliarch. T'other ones are still after the _Arjuna_."

"Continue with the attack." If the damnyankees were going let their starship get attacked, she was only too happy to oblige them. The _Phaeton_ arrowed towards the boom and drive end of the ship, then banked upwards as it released a mine shower, letting the speed of their approach send them hurtling towards the ship, then slowed slightly to launch a hail of missiles and railgun fire.

At first Caroline thought the blue flashes as the railgun slugs hit the boom were some sort of optical trick. Then the mines hit and the she could clearly see the outline the the shield around the hull.

She felt the blood begin to drain from her face. "White Christ, it has kinetic barriers," she said a split second before the first particle beam slammed into the _Phaeton_. The entire ship jerked around her as she began to issue frantic orders. She'd assumed the starship didn't have a mass effect core at all due to its primary propulsion being sublight; she hadn't considered that it would have the advanced – yet still economical of element zero – defense system of kinetic barriers.

"Barriers are down!" the weapons officer shouted as more particle beams rocked the Draka ship. While the beam weapons of the Yankee auxiliaries and her own ships had been underpowered for this sort of combat, those of the _New America_ had the reactors sufficient to maintain its interior systems while propelling its huge weight without the use of a mass effect field to have their weapons to draw on.

_Damnyankees snookered me,_ Caroline thought a moment before her world filled with brightness and flame, then blackness.

* * *

Cheers erupted in the bridge of the _Sacajawea_ as they watched the Draka FTL ship disintegrate under the pounding of _New America's_ particle beams, then continue blasting its debris into safer sizes as it hurtled onward towards the starship and struck harmlessly against the kinetic barriers. Smaller, slower moving debris – not moving at velocities high enough to activate the barriers – splashed over the boom and the drive.

_Probably element zero from its core in that debris,_ Lefarge noted to himself. _Have to get some teams to try and recover as much as possible._

"The other Snake ship took some heavy damage and jumped to FTL," the Exec announced. "Looks like it's heading back to Mars."

His fellow crewmates were slapping the young man who had spoke up on his shoulders and back as Kurasaka watched on, smiling. The ensign himself had a self-conscious but bright grin on his face.

"That was some quick thinking," Lefarge said when the noise died down to a more manageable level. "What's your name, son?"

"Hackett, sir," the young man replied in his startling voice, straightening to attention under the eyes of the OSS Brigadier. "Ensign Thomas Hackett."

"Well done, Ensign Hackett. That'll teach the Snakes not to-" He trailed off as the communications officer looked over, his face pale.

"Sir, you're going to want to see this. We've gotten transmissions from Earth, fuzzy but clear enough."

Lefarge felt a chill run through his very core as he watched the final video pickups from the Alliance's orbital battle stations before they cut off abruptly. He immediately went to the nearest medicomp and set up an injector. He pressed it against his neck and felt a cool bite. A wall of glass came between him and the world, imposing an absolute calm.

_"Now hear this,"_ Kurasaka announced over the general circuit a few minutes later. "All hands. This is the captain speaking. All hands will proceed to the nearest medicomp and take the maximum waking trank dose, _immediately._ Remain calm. Once you have taken the medication, report to sickbay by watches."

* * *

"—caused by those modulated signals the Snakes were transmitting," the ship's doctor was saying. "It's some sort of biopsychological agent that must have been lying dormant until the coded microwaves resonated and activated it."

"Why weren't we effected?" Lefarge could still feel the sick feeling at the edge of his vision, but with the tranks he could feel it as something apart from him. His tone was dull and heavy; even with the flat lack of caring, trained reflex had took over. That would be enough until they all took counteractants. Paranoia and schizophrenia were reasonably well understood, and you could suppress the symptoms quite readily, for a while.

Henry Wasser straightened in his chair. "I think I can answer that. The mass effect field somehow dissipated or blocked the Draka's transmissions."

"And we've been fighting off Snake raids off and on for hours," Kurasaka commented, eyelids heavy as he leaned his head into his hand.

Lefarge nodded slowly. "Alright. Have our people start looking for a cure immediately." _Damn Snakes always have had an edge in biologicals._ Their secret weapon seemed obvious now, in hindsight. "In the meantime, we've beaten the Snakes here in the Belt." His mouth tightened into thin, hard line. "Now we're going to start looking to take the battle back to them."


	10. Chapter 10

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**FEBRUARY 15, 1998**

"So," Eric von Shrakenberg said, looking at the head of the Technical Section. The table was more crowded for this conference than it had been for the final one on the Stone Dogs. "Strategos Snappdove, what you sayin' is basically that we in the position of a man in a desert with a bucket of water. There's enough to get us to safety, but we got a dozen holes in the bucket and only one patch." Somebody actually managed to laugh, until Eric stared at her for a moment with red-circled eyes.

The Militant Party's man frowned. "None of the problems seem insoluble, on the figures," he said suspiciously.

Eric kept his face impassive; somewhere within him, teeth were bared. _You'll be dancing to our tune for some time, headhunter,_ he thought coldly. The wall-screens were set to a number of channels; one showed the streets outside. Rain was falling out of season, mixed with frozen slush... _We humans may have earned this,_ went through him. _The plants and the beasts did not._ His hand gestured to the scientist.

"Ah." Snappdove tugged at his graying beard. He looked as if he had not slept for a week, and then in his uniform, but that was common enough here today.

"Hmm," he continued. "Strategos, you are missing the, ah, the _synergies_ between these problems." His hands moved on the table before him, calling up data. They scrolled across one wall, next to a view of Draka infantry advancing cautiously through a shattered town. The troops were in full environment suits, ghosting forward across rubble that glistened with rain. It was raining in most places, right now.

"We lost some eight percent of our Citizen population," he went on, "and fifteen percent of the serfs. Two hundred twenty million in all. But these losses are concentrated in the most highly skilled, educated components, you see? Then again, three-quarters of our Earth-based manufacturin' capacity is still operable. But crucial components are badly hit. And to rebuild, we need items that can only come from zero-G fabricators: exemplia, superconductors and high quality bearings. Not to mention the electronics, of course."

"Ghost in the machine," the Farraday Electromagnetic Combine exec half-mumbled. They all glanced over at her. "We _still_ haven't gotten certain-sure tracers on that comp-plague," she went on, and returned her gaze to her hands. "May have to close down all the fabricators commissioned in the last decade—what's left of them—an' start from scratch."

Snappdove nodded. "So we need the orbital fabricators. But we lost mo' than sixty percent of those. And more of our launch capacity. We must rapidly increase our launch capacity, but" – he spread his hands – "much of the material needed for all forms of Earth-to-orbit launch is space-made. And so it goes."

"Not to mention mo' elemental problems. Miz Lauwrence?"

The Conservancy Directorate chief raised her head from her hands. "We stopped short of killing the planet," she said dully. _There's someone who looks worse than I do,_ Eric thought with mild astonishment. "Just. Lucky the worst effects were in the northern hemisphere, where it was winter anyways. Even so" – she waved a hand to the screen that showed freezing rain dripping on the jacarandas and orange groves – "damn-all crops this year from _anywheres_. Not much in the north fo' one, maybeso two years. Oceanic productivity will be way down, we got ice formin' in the _Adriatic_, fo' Freya's sake. Even half normal will take a decade; it'll be a _century_ befo' general levels are back to normal." A death's-head smile. "That's assuming some beautiful synergism doesn't kick us right ovah the edge."

Eric looked over at the Agriculture Directorate's representative. "We can make it," he said. "_If_ the transport system can get back to somewhere like thirty percent of normal in a year or two. And _if_ there's no more excess demands, and we impose the strictest rationing. We'll have just enough in the stockpiles to tide us ovah without we have to eat the serfs." A few hollow chuckles. "We're already freezin' down the livestock that died. Best we get control of the enemy territory's grain-surplus areas as quick as may be."

The Archon nodded to the Dominarch, the head of the Supreme General Staff. He was coolly professional as he took over control of the infosystem.

"Well, we made a mistake tryin' fo' immediate landings in North America," he said. Casualty figures and losses in equipment flashed on the wall; his tone became slightly defensive at the slight but perceptible wince. On the screen beside the schematic a firefight was stabbing tongues of orange-red through the gray drizzle.

"We have some very limited reconnaissance and interdiction assets left in orbit, and there's not all that many organized fo'mations to oppose us, but we're hurt badly too; also, we've had to keep back a lot of troops to maintain order an' help with relief efforts." He paused. "An' they had a damn good fallback force waitin'," he said grimly. "Couple of cases, it was like stickin' our dicks into a meatgrinder. It goin' be a long time befo' we get that area pacified. 'Specially if'n we have to give priority to economic uses of our launch capacity. We're occupyin' a few strategic areas, stompin' on any major concentrations, an' otherwise pullin' back. Fo' one thing, we still haven't gotten the last of those subs."

Snappdove joined in the general nod. The Stone Dogs had disabled more of their submarine launchers than they had expected, but Trincomalee had taken a hypersonic at short range a few days ago. "In any case, the survivors in North America would be almost as much trouble in labor camps," he said. "Making better progress in some other areas we are, but... these are territories dependent on mechanized agriculture. We cannot support it, and the industries that did we have smashed. Also, ground combat devours resources we need elsewhere, not so much a matter of materiel as of trained personnel."

"Aerospace?" Eric said.

A nod from another of the Arch-Strategoi. "Well," she said, "in Cis-Lunar space, we won. Only Alliance installations survivin' are in Britannia an' New Edo" – two Alliance colonies on Luna – "with our people sittin' on them. Aresopolis came off surprisin' well, which is a good thing because fuck all _we_ goin' give them these next few years."

"Outer system."

A shrug. "Excellence, Mars is secure, not least because what's left of the Fleet is mostly in orbit around it. A lot of them with their comp-cores blown, but thankfully the latest compinstruction set upgrades were far from bein' completed. Not much damage to the Martian installations; the Prothean bunker wasn't hurt at all, Freya bless, and the others have been experimentin' mostly with the alien computer architecture, so those computers affected by the comp-plague were able to be rerouted through those research terminals." Another shrug. "As fo' the gas-giant moons and the mass relay, we won. We be lucky to keep them _supplied_, assumin' no hostile action, but we won."

"And in the Belt?"

"We lost. They whupped our ass, Excellence. Damn near all the sublight ships we sent out that way were destroyed by they FTL ships, whittled down by hit and run raids. The loss of the _Phaeton_ against their _New America_ has given us a better estimation of its capabilites, which is considerable. They've got pretty well complete control in there now. No offensive capability to speak of, but plenty of defense, all those tin cans with popguns an' station-based weapons. And that starship." A shrug. "Reverse holds true fo' us too. Mars and Cis-Lunar space has ground and station-based weapons as well, and they starship moves slow enough that we'd be able to see it comin' and ready defenses. They mass effect ships could be annoyin', but we have particle beams that could tear them up just as easy as they tore up the _Phaeton_."

"Dominarch," Eric said formally, "is it you opinion that, as matters stand, we can break the remainin' enemy resistance?"

The head of the Domination's military looked to either side at his peers, then looked down at his hands in thought. Finally, he spoke. "Depends on you definitions, Excellence. In Cis-Lunar space, not much of a problem, for what it's worth. On Earth, we can prevent any organized military challenge, yes. Dependin' on the resources made available" – he inclined his head toward Snappdove – "we can pacify the last of the Alliance territories in twenty to fifty years. Pacify to the point of bein' open fo' settlement. I expect some bushmen activity fo' a long, long time."

He bit his lower lip and tapped at the table with a stylus. "Problem is Trans-Lunar space. There's at least over a million ferals still left in the Belt – numbers can't be certain sure aftah all that homesteadin' they were promotin' in the last decade – an' they have that starship and the facility that built it. We have more element zero to draw on than they do, but the transport an' guardin' problems... And they are standin' above us on the gravity well." A long pause. "All factors considered... yes." Eric didn't like the note of uncertainty in his voice. "We'll have to devote everythin' we can spare to it beyond survival, but yes. Certain advantages to bein' nearer the sun, and we do grossly outnumber them, in production as well. Long, long war of attrition, though. Possibility of technological surprise as well; they won't have nearly as much to spare fo' research now, but they've been surprisin' us with even the small amount of artifacts and info'mation they got from the convoy they raided. So..." He spread his hands.

Eric tapped his fingers together, looking around the table. The Draka were not a squeamish people, nor easily frightened – but the magnitude of this was enough to daunt anyone. _Myself included,_ he thought, and surprised them with a harsh laugh.

"Come now, brothers and sisters of the Race," he said. "These are the problems of _victory_. Think how our enemies must be feelin'!" He turned to the Dominarch again.

"Consider as an alternative that we get a year's grace," he said. "In addition, that the starship actually _leaves_."

"Oh. Much better. Same prediction here on Earth; then... oh, say fifty or sixty years to mop up the Belt. Still difficult an' expensive, but it would give us some margin."

Eric tapped the table lightly. "Here is my proposal. We offer terms to the remainin' enemies in Trans-Lunar space. We finish de-icin' the mass relay at Charon. We still not sure what's on the other side of it – could lead to the heart of a star or a black hole. We could send probes, but they wouldn't be able to send signals back if the Prothean data is accurate." He inclined his head to Snappdove, who nodded.

"They're supposed to be able to instantly transport whatever is sent through thousands of light years away," he said. "No signals could get back for decades, if not centuries. The only way to know fo' sure what's on the other side is to send somebody through."

The Archon nodded. "So we allow the _New America_ and whatever other ships they got left to leave; no Draka lives need be risked, and they wiped off the board here in the system. We can guarantee that with exchange of hostages an' so forth. They turn ovah the complete schematics on the comp-plague. In addition, we offer Metic Citizenship to any who surrender on Luna an' beyond." That meant civil rights but not the franchise, with full Citizenship for their children. "Between the ones who leave, and the ones who take our offer, we cut the problem down to size."

Shock, almost an audible gasp. The Militants' spokesman burst out; "Inconceivable!"

_Thank you,_ Eric thought. _Gayner would have been more subtle._ "There's ample precedent, aftah the Eurasian War, fo' example." Everyone there would be conscious that Snappdove was the child of such.

"No precedent fo' that _scale_. And many of them would be racially totally unsuitable."

Eric smiled thinly. "Is there any precedent fo' the size of this _war?_ Fo' the extent of our _losses?_ Fo' the _situation?_ We need those skills, fo' sheer survival's sake. War to the knife now might bring down the Domination." He paused at that, for the political implications to seep home. _That's right, think on the fact that I'm the Archon who's winning the Final War. Who'll be seen as the prudent one, and who the reckless, if you push this issue._ "As to the cosmetic problem, the Eugenics Board can see that their children have suitable exteriors." _And they will know which party to throw their support behind, a factor not to be dismissed._

"But – just letting them go, to establish a colony on the other side of that instantaneous transport relay; an insane risk! They could come back any time!"

"No guarantee there's even a safe transit through the thing, let alone a terrestroid body," Eric said. "Strategos Snappdove?" The Militant flushed, knowing this was a collusion and unable to use the fact.

"Ah. Well, we estimate they could take no more than a hundred thousand on the _New America_, assuming they use our Low-Met process; drastically more if they utilize every hull they have left in the solar system, maybe even rig up some of they habitats for transpo't. Even so, no matter how well equipped, this is a small figure to maintain a technological civilization, the specialists required... The Belt itself is not self-sufficient, not really; it is almost impossible to fully duplicate a terrestroid ecology without a terrestroid planet... Using worst-case analysis, that is the best-case fo' them, fifty years after arrival at an Earth-like terrestroid body befo' they are established firmly enough to think of anything beyond bare survival. Therefo' we can expect no hostile action for sixty to seventy-five years, at an absolute minimum. Mo' probably another fifty beyond that.

"Besides which," he went on, "our studies indicate conclusively that attackin' a defended star system is virtually impossible. 'Specially with these mass relays; we could have a fleet standin' by and be ready to fire on them when they appear while rallyin' the rest of the system's defenses against the incursion. Even in the short-term, we'll be mo' powerful than a strugglin' colony could possibly be. If they did attack us, we could swat them like mosquitoes."

"Beyond that, it isn't as if we won't be stayin' here fo' very long if the transit is proven to be safe," Eric commented. "The data says the Protheans have an entire network of these relays out there, out across the entire galaxy. And we Draka have always lived fo' – not necessarily war – but to excel, to dominate, to prove ourselves. As far as we can tell, there's no other sophont race out there besides the Protheans, and they just up and disappeared fifty thousand years ago; they might not even be around any more. The universe isn't enough of a challenge, it isn't conscious; without some rival, what is the Race to measure itself against?"

Eric waited until the expressions showed the argument had been assimilated, the balance of doubt weighed, and acceptance.

"We'll need to study this in far mo' detail, of course," he went on. "And a number of factors depend on the enemy's reaction. But I take it we have a preliminary consensus to present to the Senate and Assembly?"

* * *

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**APRIL 15, 1998**

The face of the man in the screen was haggard-blank. Eric suspected that that was more than the psychotropic drugs thwarting the viral saboteurs at the base of the American's brain; it would be enough to see a world perish while you stood helpless. _There is something worse than these ashes of victory,_ he thought, moved. _Defeat_.

"You are a son of a bitch even for a Snake, you know that?" the American said.

"Those are the best terms you can expect," Eric said, making his voice gentle. The minutes of relay time were an advantage; his brain felt gritty with lack of sleep. "Oh, you mean my little offer of Citizenship?" He raised an eyebrow. "Well, you can scarcely blame you compatriots – ex-compatriots – on Luna for mostly fallin' in with it. Considerin' the alternatives."

"It's not altogether over," the voice from the screen grated. "We... hold the Belt. We're standing over your head, Snake."

"The war is ovah. Was befo' it began, or the human race would be dead. It couldn't be fought, only finessed. We both knew that; you lost, General Lefarge." _For reasons you'll never know._ "Even assumin' you support in the Belt stays rock-firm, all you can do is hurt us befo' we drag you down. Which we will in the end; to kill the Race you'd have to kill Earth. Meanin' two billion innocents; any one of whom, of course, can exercise the option of dyin' on they own initiative any time they wants. In terms of you own ethic, sacrificin' them for victory is one thing. Deprivin' them all of they personal choice just to make the Draka suffer mo' is a little questionable, isn't it?"

"Not as questionable as trusting a Draka's word on allowing us to leave peacefully."

_I've won,_ Eric thought. It brought a workman's satisfaction, if no joy. "We don't expect that. What I'm asking is fo' you and I to work out a way which doesn't _require_ that you trust us." He spread his hands. "To be absolutely frank, we don't really have the capacity to stop y'all from reachin' the mass relay, or from headin' fo' Alpha Centauri. We can only make the best departure orbit unworkable and slow you down. Which you can send observers to verify. In any case, my offer _has_ split you community. To the brink of civil war, if you refuse this option."

Slow minutes of waiting. He felt a chill; it was colder than it should be, here in Archona, much colder. _Not too much. Near the edge, but we pulled back in time. Our Mother is wounded, but she'll recover, if I can buy her time._ Eric used the opportunity to study the other's face while the message arrived. _That is a dangerous man,_ he decided. _Am I doing the right thing?

* * *

_

Frederick Lefarge glared at the lined, hawk-nosed face on the screen. _The worse part of it all is that he's right,_ he thought, clenching his teeth. _Our people have seen too much death, have seen the Alliance go down in ruins. I'm responsible for them all, and,_ he reluctantly conceded, _they can't be blamed for just wanting to live._

The words Uncle Nate had told him over twenty years ago when he offered him the job of heading the New America Project came back: _Seeds, animals, frozen animal ova, tools, knowledge, fabricators... all the art and history and philosophy the human race has produced. Enough to restart civilization – _our_ civilization. America was started by refugees, son. What's your say?_

He couldn't let it all die here. Still, having to admit defeat to this smug, aristocratic _Draka_ was galling.

"We accept, pending the details," Lefarge spat. "And your sympathy isn't worth shit, Snake." He recovered an icy possession. "Tell me, though. Why not just offer admission to the Snake farm to our traitors?"

Von Shrakenberg spread his hands in concession. "Two... no, three reasons, Brigadier Lefarge. First, many mo' will take the offer, if they can salve they consciences by knowin' y'all have a place to go." He smiled.

"Sun Tzu said that one should never totally block an enemy's retreat; retreatin' refugees are less troublesome than a last stand, at the moment. Second, and this I used with my colleagues, what are the Draka without an enemy? Neither of us knows if the Protheans are still out there; we'll know _y'all_ are out there. We won't be able to follow y'all anytime soon either – that's anothah thing we can arrange to verify. Third, fo' my private consumption... Well, let's say that the Domination... forecloses certain options, as a path of human development. Better that not all the eggs be in one basket fo' Earth's children."

Lefarge nodded curtly and, without another word, cut the connection. He stared at the blank screen for a moment, then rubbed a hand over his face. _Oh God, am I doing the right thing?_ His mother, Chantal, had raised he and Marya to be religious. She had even pushed Marya to become a sister of the cloth but, in the end, she had followed him into the OSS. A pang as he remembered his twin sister, dead by her own hand on Mars after killing Yolande Ingolfsson. _What would you say, ma soeur?

* * *

_

"I don't like this," Anson MacDonald said, "not one bit."

Lefarge stared at the man dully. He was a lean, bald man in his mid-fifties, the graying hair he had left cropped close to the sides and back of his skull, a thin line of mustache – darker than the hair on his head – just above his upper lip. And he was, of all things, a US Navy commodore, wearing a deep blue uniform. He had been on a familiarization tour with the Space Force at the exact moment when the Snakes had decided to launch the Final War.

His rank was equivalent to Lefarge's own, so the two of them were technically equal in the military hierarchy. As head of the Project, however, the OSS brigadier outranked him in practice.

"Always thought this New America business was madness," MacDonald continued. "Defeatist madness. We would have done better to put all this energy, all this manpower, all these resources, into first-strike capability. I always said so, to anyone who would listen. Not enough people did."

"And maybe we would have lost all those people, all those resources, to the Snakes' virus," Lefarge replied evenly. "As it is, this is the only way any part of the Alliance for Democracy – of the United States of America – is going to survive."

"I _still_ don't like it." MacDonald's tone was bitter. "Those sons of bitches are going to turn the free men and women of the United States and the rest of the Alliance into serfs. Do you know what that is, Brigadier? It's the biggest rape in the history of the world."

Lefarge sighed. "I happen to agree with you, Commodore. But, unfortunately, it's done. Our duty now is to the people of the Alliance for Democracy that are left. We swore our oaths to preserve, protect and defend them." In his mind's eye, he could see the face of the Draka Archon again. _No matter how much we hate it._


	11. Chapter 11

**CONTROL DECK**

**ALLIANCE SHIP _NEW AMERICA_**

**CHARON MASS RELAY**

**JANUARY 18, 2000**

"That's it," Captain Anderson said, not quite able to keep a note of awe out of his voice. He eased the earphones from his wiry black hair; a stocky pug-faced Minnesotan of Danish descent, and a physicist of note as well as a Space Forcer.

Anderson looked at the gaunt man who stood watching the mass relay in the main tank-screen in the center of the control deck. Although completely alien in design, the construction closely resembled an enormous gyroscope. At its center was a sphere made up of two concentric rings spinning around a single axis. Each ring was nearly five kilometers across, and two fifteen kilometer arms protruded out from one end of the constantly rotating middle. The entire structure sparkled and flashed with white bursts of crackling energy.

"So they're keeping their word, for once," Lefarge said softly. "Not that we left them any choice, the way we had it set up." It was surprising enough that von Shrakenberg had trusted _him_ to broadcast the final specs on the comp-plague.

"We're still ready in case any of their FTL ships decide to drop in on us at the last minute," Anderson said. "We'd shred them before they could do much damage."

"That's true," Lefarge agreed. _New America_ was the largest ship in the motley horde of vessels and converted space habitats that were assembled in formation near the massive piece of alien technology, but far from the only armed one. Miners, haulers, prospectors, transports... even ships of Draka origin, ranging from the sublight warships captured during their attempted raid on Ceres, to the two cargo carriers that had been captured back in '89. All of them filled with as many refugees as they could without compromising the safety of the vessels or the fleet as a whole. The _New America_ itself had another forty thousand onboard in addition to the one hundred thousand in low-metabolic stasis.

"Nine hundred forty-three thousand eight hundred and seventy-four men, women and children," he said. "There's no way we could have brought so many if the _Sacajawea_ hadn't told us about a good candidate for colonization after another jump through the mass relay on the far side." The FTL auxiliary had successfully transited the mass relay several months ago and discovered that the other one travelled to several locations instead of a single one as the one at Charon did. _Sacajawea's_ sister ships, meanwhile, had maintained a watch over the device ever since to make sure the Snakes went nowhere near it as the fleet made its way here. The Draka ships that had completed the excavation had withdrawn back to the Domination's facilities at the gas-giant moons as part of the agreement.

"Transmitting fleet mass to the relay," the communications officer said.

"Communication to the fleet." Lefarge forced strength and confidence into his voice. "Begin burn to the mass relay's approach corridor. Good luck and godspeed to us all. See you on the far side." He paused as the channel was closed, then cleared his throat. _I never liked public speaking,_ he thought as he tapped some keys on the console near the tank-screen.

The view changed to show the receding light of Sol, no more than an unusually bright star at this distance. Anderson came up beside him and looked as well. There was no other sound besides the ventilators, and the subliminal tremor of the drive. "Perhaps one day we... our descendants could come back."

"No. No, not if they have any sense. There'll be nothing here worth coming back for; we're taking all the valuables with us. All that's left."

As the fleet moved forward – pulsedrives, mirror-matter reactors and the scant few mass effect drives – the rings at the relay's heart began to spin faster, accelerating until they were nothing but a whirling blur. The sporadic bursts of energy emanating from its core became a solid, pulsing glow, growing in strength and intensity until it was almost impossible to look at.

The leading ships of the Alliance for Democracy's refugee fleet were less than five hundred kilometers away when the relay fired. A discharge of dark energy swept out from the spinning rings like a wave, engulfing the ships. They shimmered momentarily, then disappeared as if snuffed out of existence. Instantaneously they winked back into reality in a whole different star system in staggered waves – the _New America_ last of all – emerging from apparent nothingness with a bright blue flash in the vicinity of a completely different mass relay.

Lefarge stared at the tank-screen which showed the fleet stretching out in all directions, surrounding the _New America_ like an ocean of steel. The entire scene was illuminated by the orange glow emanating from the type-K red giant in the distance. The ships reflected the star's fiery glow, gleaming brilliantly – as if there was new hope to be found for them under the light of a new sun.

"Arcturus," he breathed. It was one thing to get the reports about traveling to a different star system, but it was a whole different experience to see a star completely different from the sun you grew up under with your own eyes. "Thirty-six point seven light years from Sol." Lefarge shook his head slowly, awestruck. "Over eight times the distance it would have taken to get to Alpha Centauri, which was a forty year transit time with a mirror-matter drive. Done in an instant."

A low whistle from Anderson. "Damn impressive," he remarked. "And to think the Protheans built an entire network of these things across the Milky Way."

The thought was a daunting one. Lefarge shook himself out of it after a moment; he'd been too easily becoming introspective these days. He needed to stay clearheaded for the sake of his people and their future.

"Right," he said abruptly. "Nothing for us in this system, though. Send word to the fleet: we will proceed immediately to the system the _Sacajawea_ found. Helm, bring us about to face the mass relay." _Need to get some space between us and the Snakes if they decide to break their word, anyway._ As far as they could tell there was no way the Draka would be able to tell where they had gone after they transited, since this relay would reset itself to face Sol if – no, when – they came through. There were dozens of relays linked to this one.

This time after the signal was sent out the mass relay began to move. It turned ponderously on its axis, orienting itself with a linked relay hundreds of light years away. Again, the discharge of dark energy swept over the fleet and transported them to another system.

For a moment Lefarge thought that they had accidentally been returned to the Sol system. Then he realized that the yellow star was larger in the tank-screen than Sol had been before they had used the Charon relay.

"Type-G star, four planet system," Anderson reported as he scrolled through the _Sacajawea's_ report on a nearby terminal. "Three terrestroid planets and one gas-giant. The first planet has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, a bit smaller than Earth, no moons. The colonization candidate they reported." A pause as he read more, then a surprised grunt. "Our stellar cartography team says we're in an entirely different star cluster. They're still trying to figure out exactly what star this is–"

"Never mind." Lefarge's face was an stony mask as he stared at the view of the system before them. "This is way out of our old neighborhood, anyway. We'll give this star a new name that will tell our descendants – and the Snakes if they ever find us – just what this new home of ours means." A smile with a savage edge to it. "They like Classical references, right? We'll call this system Invictus. _Unconquered_."

* * *

**CONTROL DECK**

**ALLIANCE SHIP _NEW AMERICA_**

**ORBIT OF FIRST PLANET**

**INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**JANUARY 25, 2000**

Frederick Lefarge stared down at the planet below. It had a blue glow around its edges, just as Earth did. Unlike Earth, it was slightly further away from its star but – seemingly paradoxically – had a warmer surface temperature; there was a band of desert around its equator, while the regions closer to the poles were more temperate. The scientists said there was likely an overabundance of what they termed 'greenhouse gasses' that kept more heat within the atmosphere, a little known phenomenon that had been utilized mostly in proposals for terraforming Mars.

The first people were already walking on its surface, brought down by one of _New America's_ sublight auxiliaries. Ground and air surveyors were searching for a suitable site for a main settlement while the ships of the fleet remained in orbit.

The Invictus system as a whole covered a far smaller area than Sol's, as well. _Even the old pulsedrives will be useful here in developing this system._ Further investigation of the neighboring gas-giant – which was large enough to equal _six_ Jupiters – found that it possessed over ninety moons, including metal-rich asteroids. _While we should be able to mine helium-3 from the gas-giant itself,_ Lefarge thought. _Our power considerations should be taken care of, anyway._

Captain Paul Anderson walked up beside him, folded his arms as he also took in the view. "Guess I'm going to be out of a job soon," he remarked. "I'm thinking maybe I'll get into building fusion reactors, or finish that novel at last."

Lefarge smiled, but shook his head. _New America_ was slated to be part of the construction materials of a colony as per the original plan but, as everything had since the discovery of the Prothean bunker, that was going to change. "No, I don't think _New America_ is ready to be retired just yet, Captain. The Snakes are out there; hell, the Protheans or who knows what else could be out there too. This is the largest ship humanity has ever built. We'll strip out everything we possibly can for the colony below, but I think she's got a new lease on life as a dedicated warship."

A frown came to his face as he gave further thought. "We'll have to rebuild _every_thing, come to that." A glance at the questioning look on the captain's face. "Much as we hate to admit it, the Alliance for Democracy is dead. It died back in the Sol system." Lefarge shook his head. "It was too decentralized, too prone to paralyzing bureaucracy, even after we tried to made it the sovereign government after the India fiasco. We're going to learn from our mistakes, and build a new nation based on the founding principles of the system we love, as well as the realities of the enemy we _know_ is out there."

Lefarge smiled grimly as he nodded his head towards the view of the planet. "We believe in democracy, the will of the people. That all started back in Ancient Greece; while the place itself has been under their Yoke since the Eurasian War, the principles, the _ideas_, have stayed with us. We've been thinking long and hard about what to call our new homeworld. There was an island city-state that was particularly rich and powerful: Samos. They produced such individuals as the mathematician Pythagoras, and the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, the first individual to propose that the Earth revolved around the sun."

To the look of dawning realization on Anderson's face: "No, that's not the name we're thinking of. Even the Greeks of Samos went out and left their home island behind. They crossed what were rocky, turbulent seas and found a new home on another island, _made_ themselves a new home. A fitting analogue to our situation, hmm?" He looked back at the view of the planet in the tank-screen. "_That's_ what we're going to name this planet." A smile. "Samothrace."

Anderson was silent as he watched the brigadier. He'd lost weight since the Fall, what everyone was starting to call the events of the 'Final War' that – with the mass relays – might turn out to be not so final. Everyone who met him, talked to him, could tell that it ate away at him. _But since we passed through the mass relay at Charon he's been different. Energized, almost._ There was a lot of work ahead of them all, settling this new Samothrace and rebuilding human civilization_._ _And _not_ the abomination of it the Draka call it,_ he thought. _Hell, with that New Race of theirs, there probably won't be anything human left there in a generation anyway._

The captain hesitated, then patted a hand on Lefarge's shoulder. "Well then. Personally, I think my contributions to _Samothrace_, then, are going to be down there. I'm a physicist; most of the reason I was given command of _New America_ was so I could help maintain her during a forty year trip. If she's going to go warship, she'll need to be in more capable hands than mine."

Lefarge turned to the Minnesotan and shook his hand. "I understand. We all have our own ways to help build our new nation. And don't worry," he continued, smiling, "I think I know the perfect man to take your place."

* * *

Anson MacDonald stared at Lefarge, his face a mask as he took in what he had heard. "You do know that I'm a thirty-year _Navy_ man, correct? I hardly know anything about this space stuff."

Lefarge shook his head. "Beside the point. I need a man to help reorganize and rebuild our fleet, and there are plenty of old Space Forcers to help you with the technical details." He leaned forward. "What I need is a man not set in the old ways of doing things, who won't continue doing what's been done before just _because_ it's what's been done before."

MacDonald smiled grimly. "No danger of that," he said in his deep voice, raspy from too many years of cigarettes. "People kept telling me I'd have two stars, maybe three, by now if I could learn to keep my mouth shut. They were probably right, but..." He shrugged. "I've always been a loose cannon."

Lefarge leaned back in his chair as he considered the man in front of him. He smiled slowly. "You almost sound like you're trying to argue your way out of the job," he remarked.

"No, sir." MacDonald shook his head firmly. "I'll always do my utmost to serve, but I'm just telling you what to expect. Don't expect me to stay quiet if I see something wrong in the way we're doing things." His gaze became hooded. "We lost back in the solar system because we were soft. The Fall, in a way, was a judgment on us. Worse than we deserved, maybe, but a judgment all the same."

Lefarge's face went stony, but he raised a questioning eyebrow. "What do you mean by that, Commodore?"

"It's not hard, Brigadier. Draka Citizens are A-Number One bastards, but they've always known what's on the line for them. If they ever let up, even for a second, they were doomed. They had responsibility and discipline forced on them. We didn't, or not enough. And so... we're here, and they're back around Sol."

"It wasn't as simple as that," Lefarge said, voice disapproving.

"Probably not," the Commodore said cheerfully. "But are you going to tell me it's not one of the reasons they won and we lost?"

The OSS man blinked at the sudden change in the man's tone, then studied him for a long moment. "You're a hard man to like, Commodore MacDonald." The Navy man nodded in agreement, without hesitation.

After another minute of silent thought, he stood and extended a hand across the desk. "But I think we can work together."

MacDonald took the hand and shook it firmly. "I'll take the job, sir, but if I'm going to do it it's going to be a navy, not that space force nonsense," he warned.

Lefarge grinned and actually found himself holding back a laugh. "I can work with that, Admiral." MacDonald seemed taken aback for a moment, then nodded in acknowledgment of the promotion. "You certainly know how to talk. Now let's see if you can put your money where your mouth is."

* * *

**JEFFERSON SETTLEMENT**

**SAMOTHRACE**

**INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**APRIL 2, 2000**

Frederick squinted against the sunlight as he stood by the window of his office, looking down at the streets of the raw settlement below. Many of them were still graveled dirt, lined by the modular buildings brought out of _New America's_ cargo hold and reassembled dirtside. People bustled back and forth, with yet more modular buildings being assembled further out and technicians and engineers surveying or laying down the groundwork for basic utilities.

There was a muted roar in the distance as one of _New America's_ auxiliaries descended to the spaceport several kilometers away, bringing down more specialists and equipment from orbit. The spaceport had been the first piece of infrastructure to be constructed to help expedite the expansion of Jefferson, this initial settlement, and create homes for the teeming masses still waiting on the ships above.

Lefarge turned back to his plain metal desk and sat back down with a sigh. Reports were already piled on it, reporting on the progress of surveying mineral deposits, farmland, fresh water, and the numerous other things needed to help support modern human civilization. Preliminary reports told of traces of platinum, and suggested there might be significant deposits if they could only gain more dirigible time.

He snorted quietly. The airships they were knocking together were worth their weight in gold these days. _Or tobacco anyway,_ he thought. _Some people can't understand that food takes priority._ Dirigibles, they knew, were the best form of transportation to help develop the untamed wilderness of Samothrace. It had been proven before by the Snakes when they took over Africa back in the 19th Century, and by the United States in settling the vast spaces of the North American continent.

Lefarge looked up at the sound of a knock on his door. The uniformed young woman standing there saluted. "Sir, the _Columbus_ has finished compiling its final report on the survey of the Demos system."

He returned the salute and held out a hand for the folder. "Give me the gist. Is that planet they found workable?"

Involuntarily, a grin came to the young woman's face, making her look younger than her mid-twenties. _God, Janet and Iris are almost that age._ He sighed inwardly, feeling every one of his nearly fifty-two years at that moment. "Sir, it's perfect from what they're saying. In their words, it's 'unusually well-suited for importation of Earth-native life.'"

Lefarge's eyebrows rose, and he opened the folded to skim through the report. _Unusually well-suited indeed._ One of the primary concerns of the biologists had been if the plants and animals they had brought with them would acclimate properly to the warmer biosphere of Samothrace. The second planet of the other system they had discovered was slightly larger than Earth and further from its star – what the discovering captain had named Demos – but its climate remained more similar to the Earth average.

"Looks good on the figures." He fell silent as he considered, then nodded. "I think we can spare the resources for an agricultural colony to introduce the plants and animals we've brought. Once they've matured, we can try and see which ones will be able to survive here." Another look at the folder showed the proposed name for the planet, and he snorted again. "We'll see how well, ah, _California_ does then."

* * *

Mass Effect notes:

Samothrace is Terra Nova, and California is Eden Prime.


	12. Chapter 12

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA**

**EARTH, SOL SYSTEM**

**DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA**

**MARCH 3, 2000**

Eric von Shrakenberg gazed out the window to his office, expression solemn. The sky was overcast and gloomy over the familiar sight of the dome of the House of Assembly; the winds had been cold, these past winters. Cold and full of death. But the land would recover, if not fully before he laid his bones to rest. The grass stood green, though the gardens that made the Domination's capital famous weren't able to bloom back to their previous colored brilliance yet.

An exhalation from his nose as he turned his face, blank of expression, back to the terminal and the data-plaques on his desk; the closest he came to a sigh these days. Rebuilding had taken on a faster pace over the past couple of months, ever since the _New America_ had transmitted the last specifications on their comp-plague before disappearing through the mass relay. With their computers free and clear, the fleet was able to truly reconnect the far-flung outposts of the solar system with each other.

The corner of Eric's mouth quirked upward. They had also investigated what was left of the Belt after the Alliance's fleet had departed for the mass relay. There had been nothing of use left; the reports from the soldiers on the scene had had a grudging admiration for the asteroid-habitats stripped bare and sabotaged into uselessness. Those few Alliance civilians who'd been left behind had largely taken up his offer of Metic Citizenship, though there had been pockets of fanatical resistance here and there, easily crushed by ghouloon troops hunting them down in the narrow corridors.

A grimace as he recalled the fuss some of the Militants were _still_ kicking up over giving so many 'damnyankees' Citizen status. "A third of the human species dies, and _Louise Gayner_ survived," he muttered under his breath. He and his political rival hated each other with a pure, concentrated loathing that was almost intimate in its intensity. A grim smile. _But I _am_ the Archon who won the war._ He had sent her to Australasia to pacify it. _Butcher's work that she's probably _enjoying_, the twisted bitch,_ he thought. He just hoped she ended up doing it badly enough to give him an ax-swing at her neck.

A beep from his desk; he reached a hand over and keyed the intercom. "Excellence, everyone has assembled for the meeting you called."

"Send them in." Eric sat up in his chair and straightened his cravat.

The doors to the Central Office opened, and the men and women he had called filed in. The Directors of War and Security, the Dominarch of the Supreme General Staff, the Council members, and Strategos Snappdove, the head of the War Directorate's Technical Section. They went to their seats and stood in front of them, then brought their right fists to their chests in the Draka military salute. "Service to the State," they chorused.

"Glory to the Race." Eric inclined his head. "Please be seated." After the rustling of cloth and sigh of cushions gave way to silence: "So you sent one of our ships through the Charon relay," he stated. "What did they find?"

The Dominarch cleared his throat. "The other end of the mass relay is in a system around the star Arcturus, a K-type red giant located in the constellation Boötes. A bit over thirty-six light years away." A pause as everyone took that in; everyone had a reasonably good idea of the sheer immensity that represented. The whole solar system was a flyspeck in comparison.

Eric felt a bit of that awe himself. _Wotan, when I was born we were flyin' biplanes, and now we're travelin' through the galaxy._ A lot of that was due to the Protheans, but all in all it was still impressive. "Any sign of the Yankee fleet?" he asked aloud.

The head of the Domination's military shook his head. "They were long gone by the time we got there, Excellence. The Arcturus system only has gas-giants, ice chunks, and some rocky debris around it, no terrestroid planets. It's likely they used the Arcturus relay to go somewhere else." He shook his head in answer to the next unspoken question. "We don't know where they went, either. That relay connects to dozens of others, as opposed to the one at Charon which just connects to Arcturus. We'd be a long time tryin' to find them."

Eric narrowed his eyes as he leaned his elbows on the desk and rested the fingertips of each hand against each other. "So that relay is the only one that connects to our solar system, but also connects to the galaxy at large," he mused. "Sounds to me like that there's a chokepoint." A smile came to his face, and for a moment he was the young centurion of Century A, 1st Airborne Legion again, organizing the defenses of Village One on the Ossetian Military Highway against a German counterattack.

The Dominarch nodded slowly, following the Archon's train of thought. "A stronghold, Excellence?"

Eric shook his head. "A _fleet_, Dominarch. We know the Yankees are out there, and it's possible we not the only ones in the galaxy." He gestured with one hand as he continued, "The Race didn't conquer the solar system by takin' half-measures. A battle station, larger than anything we've built before, and a fleet using it as a base."

"Can we afford that, Excellence?" One of the Council members had spoken up, a frown on her face. "We still rebuildin' _an'_ pacifyin' the New Territories."

"This isn't buyin' up some fancy from the auction block," Eric said coldly. "This is _necessary_. We opened up Pandora's box when we unburied that relay and started usin' it. _Think_ about it. There's an entire _galaxy_ on the other side of that thing." He paused and looked around at them as he let that sink in. "_Anything_ could be out there. Fo' the sake of the State, fo' the sake of the Race, we need to set up defenses in that system to protect the only route to our_ home_, to _Earth_."

He leaned back in his chair. "Of course, we never been ones to jus' sit on our laurels, either. That fleet can also be used to send out reconassance patrols through the Arcturus relay, to look fo' the Yankees and scout out the ground. See if there are other planets suitable fo' colonization, and meet any threats as far fo'ward of Earth as possible."

"Ah, hmm." Snappdove tugged at his beard in thought as he considered the Archon's words. "As the Dominarch said, the Arcturus system is deficient in metals. We'd have to, hmm, tow some metal-rich asteroids through the relay, mine them to build the battle station... maybe use the mined out asteroids fo' habitats..." He trailed off into mumbles, lost in thought.

Eric inclined his head towards Snappdove. "Have a plan drawn up fo' the station and a resource analysis soonest, Strategos." The head of TechSec nodded abstractedly.

"Now," the Archon continued, "seein' as this is vital to the security of the Domination, I'm hereby openin' up our element zero reserves to our mass effect ships to assist in rebuildin' Earth's launch capacity an' our orbital fabricators. I'm given to understand that with they mass effect fields, they'll be able to haul a goodly amount of cargo into and out the atmosphere. We need that infrastructure to build a new fleet of warships with mass effect drives. One of our priorities in explorin' the relay network should be seekin' out new sources of element zero and alien technology."

A few glances exchanged between the people seated in front of the desk. Up until now the element zero stockpile they had discovered on Mars had been a jealously guarded strategic reserve, doled out to a relative few FTL ships and research projects with TechSec and the Combines. Nods of agreement.

"Very well." Eric pulled up another report on the infosystem and text filled one of the wall-screens, next to an satellite picture of southeastern North America. "Now, on to this runnin' sore in No'th Carolina..."

* * *

**JEFFERSON**

**SAMOTHRACE, INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**JUNE 28, 2002**

Frederick Lefarge skimmed through the latest reports on the progress of the outlying settlements; several had been established within the past year as a pioneering spirit had swept through the colonists. He frowned slightly as he got to the report about Akatsuki, the settlement that had been championed by Patricia Hayato – the lifesystems specialist of the old New America Project – and established exclusively by the ethnic Japanese from among the refugee fleet in the southern hemisphere. It was, by far, the most remote settlement on Samothrace.

He could see their wanting to recreate a piece of Japan on this new world, especially considering the fate of their home islands on Earth, but it went against the grain of the new nation he was hoping to build. _I want it to be like the old America, the nation I grew up in, the nation I joined the OSS to defend,_ he thought. _The melting pot, welcoming the refugees looking for freedom and weaving them into the fabric of the nation._ Hayato and her supporters instead called for a 'cultural mosaic', a society of many individual, 'pure' cultures that mixed but remained distinct. She had found a lot of sympathizers among the Brazilians, British, and Indonesians who were putting forth their own proposals to preserve their own unique cultures with remote settlements on Samothrace or California; admittedly, her ideas already had credence in the way they had all already been unified by a common purpose in the old Alliance for Democracy.

"Well, it will be interesting to see how that all plays out," he muttered to himself as set those reports aside. The refugees were all still under military jurisdiction under his command, but Jefferson and other settlements further along in development were already electing local politicians. He and others were still trying to work out exactly the system of government that would let the civilians take over the administrative duties. _Can't happen soon enough,_ he thought morosely as he grabbed another folder from the pile on his desk.

Lefarge's frown deepened as he read through the next report. There had been a spike in significant physical defects among children from three to fours year old ranging from cancer to organ damage and birth defects. The doctors were at a loss to explain the phenomenon, but were saying that they suspected a connection to a spate of spontaneous abortions back in '98, during the Fall. Included was a request for access to more detailed military medical records.

_Approved_, he wrote and scrawled his signature beneath it. _I hope to God they can find the cause. There are too few of us as it is._

He had just set that folder aside when his phone beeped. Swallowing a sigh, he keyed the touchplate. "Lefarge here."

"General, MacDonald here." The face of the admiral appeared on the screen, his expression far more grim than was usual even for him. "The _Alaungpaya_ just arrived in orbit, heavy damage. They say they were attacked."

Lefarge sat bolt upright. "The Snakes?" he snapped, tense. _Damn it, why'd they have to find us so soon?_

"No, sir," MacDonald replied. "They were attacked by unknowns."

Lefarge blinked, caught off guard. After a moment, his mind began working. "Protheans?"

"That's what I thought too, sir, but by their reports it doesn't sound right. The unknowns' capabilities sound closer to our level. If it was the Protheans – if they're still around – I don't think the _Alaungpaya_ would have been able to escape."

Lefarge considered, then nodded. "Assemble all our remaining FTL ships. They are to proceed to the coordinates where they met the unknowns and engage." His eyes narrowed. "Whoever they are, we're going to teach them that we do _not_ take kindly to attacks on our ships."

"Yes, sir!" MacDonald saluted, then cut the connection.

* * *

**HORSE HEAD NEBULA**

**AUGUST 5, 2002**

Chalak Kan'terah glared with all four eyes at his subordinates, all batarians as he was, tilting his head to the right to signify his superiority over them. Having so many of them gathered at this planetside base was dangerous, even though this was a rarely visited system. Though there were persistent rumors that the ancient krogan warlord Moro had had his base here during the Krogan Rebellions.

"How hard can it be?" he shouted. "We beat those damn krogan when they stuck their heads into this cluster a few years back. It's just another pirate gang! The Hegemony doesn't claim territory anywhere near here, and the turians don't patrol the Attican Traverse."

Chalak had carved himself a nice setup in this cluster, pirating merchant vessels and raiding colonies on the fringes of Citadel space for slaves. Over the years he had built up a respectable fleet that answered only to him. A fleet that had been steadily getting decimated in recent weeks.

"They're too organized to be a pirate gang," one of the captains insisted. "And their ships are nothing I've seen before."

"What are you saying?" he jeered. "That they're aliens who just appeared out of nowhere with a fleet capable of taking _us_ on?

"What _I_ think," he continued, his voice dropping to a menacing hiss, "is that you're making excuses. Nobody takes on Chalak Kan'terah and lives! Get back out there and–"

Chalak stopped as one of his captains' radios let out a loud squawk of feedback, then a voice started talking fast. "They're here! They're here! We're going to–" The voice suddenly cut off, leaving behind an ominous silence.

Before the gathered batarians could do more than exchange uneasy glances, the floor began to tremble beneath their feet. "Orbital bombardment!" someone shouted, and panic set in as everyone began running for the hangar.

Chalak began to run after them when a particularly close hit sent him sprawling. Had things been less urgent he might have been chagrined at the irony of the situation, or filled with an incandescent rage at the _presumption_ of these interlopers. But, as he got back to his feet, all he could think of was escape.

* * *

Anson MacDonald smiled grimly as he watched yet another alien frigate attempting to take off from the surface of the inhospitable planet below explode under the concentrated pounding of _New America's_ eleven auxiliaries; _Alaungpaya_ was still in orbit around Samothrace, getting repairs and being refitted with new armor plating. All of them had been refitted with mass effect cores in the couple of years since they had left Sol behind.

He could have had his communications officer send down a demand for surrender to these four-eyed bipedal aliens, but the thought never crossed his mind. Most of them had seen how these raiders operated against their more remote outposts: ruthlessly killing most of the people there and trying to implant some sort of control devices in the skulls of the survivors – without anesthetic.

_It's obvious they don't represent a central government. That makes them pirates._ MacDonald's smile broadened. _We can kill pirates._ The few ships they had managed to capture had an obvious slapdash look to their maintenance and repairs, and their numbers were too few over a star cluster that didn't seem to have any established settlements or infrastructure. Besides, they had already captured plenty of prisoners. The former OSS agents and some scientists were working on them, trying to figure out their language and gather intelligence. It had taken them this long to discover their center of operations.

"We've had enough of border clashes and atrocities from the Draka," he muttered under his breath. _Damned if we're going to let it happen again out here._


	13. Chapter 13

**DOMINATION SPACE COMMAND PLATFORM _HYPERION_**

**ARCTURUS SYSTEM**

**LOCAL CLUSTER**

**MARCH 20, 2003**

Eric von Shrakenberg stood in front of the armorglass gazing out at the orange glow of Arcturus, the glass polarized to allow viewers to look straight at it, as well as the view of the hydrogen-helium gas-giant below that the as-of-yet unfinished battle station he was standing in was named after. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression solemn as his face looked back at him, transparent against the black void beyond the edges of the red giant star.

_Like a ghost,_ he thought. He had felt his age catching up with him more and more in recent months; he was nearly eighty-five years old, and his second term as Archon was due to end next year. The feeling only intensified as he turned around and took in the large room full of young aquiline faces in the dress blacks of the War Directorate. Every one of them, without exception, of the New Race.

They were all standing in lined formation across the room, used more regularly as a recreation center. It had dozens of linked public rooms with the usual facilities, palaestra and baths and bedrooms. There was a continuous low murmur as they chatted with one another. Lined against the walls were ghouloons, in surface suits and armor, but with faceguards swung back. They kept their eyes and muzzles facing front, but their pointed ears swiveled towards the multitudinous conversations. The tables that were usually near the edges of this main room were gone. Eric was standing on the stage that usually held musicians and singers in front of the armorglass window that allowed those at their ease to take in the view; he knew that if the station were ever attacked, there was a solid slab of armor plating that would slide closed over the structural weakness.

Behind the ghouloons were big murals on the walls, holograph copies. All of them scenes of the Domination's military victories: showing 'Drakian' soldiers dating from the time of the Land-Taking on horseback with the Ferguson rifle-muskets and double-barreled dragoon pistols of the eighteenth century, Bantu warriors kneeling before them in submission; battle scenes from the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny of the 1850s in which Draka expeditionary forces had assisted the beleaguered British; early Draka dirigibles destroying Odessa in an air raid during the Anglo-Russian War; a fleet of hundreds of dirigibles over Constantinople during the Great War, biplanes darting among them; a scene of gray shattered buildings under a gray sky, with a column of mid-Eurasian War model Hond III tanks going through, mud squelching up from under their treads, the Draka crews showing head-and-shoulders out of the turrets; Falcon VI-a scramjet fighters screeching over the Indian subcontinent during the conquest of the mid-1970s, the edges of their wing bodies glowing cherry-red with friction with the blue-white light bursts of radiation bombs on the ground below; and a scene from the Final War, of the familiar skyline of the old Federal Capital District of New York City being vaporized by the bursts of multiple fusion bombs.

_A mix of the old and the new,_ Eric thought as he nodded fractionally to the nearby merarch. She strode onto the empty floor in front of the stage, face twisted into a scowl. "A-tten-_shun!_" she shouted.

The low murmur abruptly transformed into a sudden silence, a rippling snapping sound as the heels of military-standard boots crashed together as the new graduates drew to abrupt attention. They all stood completely motionless, eyes straight ahead with no involuntary movements – something Eric still found a bit eerie even now. The merarch did a smart about-face to face the Archon and threw a cracking salute, right fist to chest.

Eric nodded approvingly to the officer, then strode slowly forward to the wooden lectern with the Drakon carved in bas-relief on the front of it. His eyes swept over the crowd, his scored eagle face composed into a severe expression. After the cursory scan was complete he nodded abruptly and began to speak.

"I came here today to speak to the first class of recruits to complete they trainin' out here, beyond the Sol system. To remind y'all of our beloved Domination's hist'ry of grand military conquests." A hand swept out to gesture at the murals along the walls. "Maybe to stroke yo' egos by tellin' y'all how this is all the unfoldin' of Destiny, the sacred destiny of the Race."

A low murmur of chuckling among those assembled, until his glare cut it off. "Instead," he continued, "I'm heah to tell you that we received word just hours ago that one of our expedition fleets was attacked by an alien species, a patrol fleet we think. Only one of our frigates made it back."

The crowd remained silent in their discipline, their expressions barely changed. But Eric could see the momentary widening of their eyes, their only reaction.

"Y'all are facin' an unprecedented situation." He clasped his hands behind his back, nodded slightly at startled blinks that met the wording of his statement. "That's right, I said _you_ face this situation. We, yo' human fo'fathers and mothers, we won our Old Domination because we were tough, and prepared... and because we were _lucky_ enough to have enemies who'd fight an' argue with each other rather than us, or to have Prothean bunkers fall in our lap.

"But if you of the New Race, the _Homo drakensis_, plan to extend _yo'_ Domination, you'll have to be _twice_ as tough, _twice_ as disciplined as we were. We could be on the verge of startin' a war that will culminate in the total annihilation of the Race; they could have a fleet a _thousand times_ the size of ours. _You can still lose it all._ Never forget that, _never_. Every day you live, you live on the edge of oblivion. It's up to you, the young. Rule or die, kill or be killed, _crush or be crushed_. Always on guard fo' opportunity, takin' what you can, never relinquishin' an inch.

"Destiny is what we make it. _Service to the State!"_

_"Glory to the Race!"_ It crashed out from the graduates like thunder, broke into a spontaneous chant that lasted for minutes as the ghouloon troopers threw back their heads and gave a barking howl.

* * *

**VRITRA 2, VRITRA SYSTEM**

**LOCAL CLUSTER**

**MARCH 27, 2003**

Lantam Scavris advanced slowly and cautiously across the broken ground, his Armax Arsenal assault rifle held at the ready in his three-fingered taloned hands. He and the rest of his squad were mostly bare-headed, the rigid metallic carapace of brown-gray cartilage and bone open to the air, their faces tattooed with the colors of their home colonies. None of them liked how their helmets restricted their vision; some still wore a pressurized cowl that covered most of their skull and their head fringe, leaving only their faces exposed.

Lantam kept his avian eyes moving, scanning back and forth for movement. His superiors hadn't told them much about the enemy they were facing, just that they were an ignorant species who were caught violating Council law. _I wouldn't have minded a few more details,_ he thought without rancor. But he was still here, doing his duty for the Turian Hierarchy in obedient silence. That he could have done anything else never even occurred to him.

A larger turian fleet had been assembled and rapidly overran the defenses of the lone outpost on this planet. The defenders had scattered into the surrounding wilderness and had been harassing the garrison force with pinprick raids and long-range fire. _Which is why we're out here among all this alien vegetation._ It was all levo-amino acid-based, while his peoples' biology was based on dextro-amino acids; if he were to accidentally ingest any of it, there was the possibility that it would be fatal.

"Not the only things that can be fatal around here," he muttered to himself. "Keep sharp."

His vigilance was rewarded a few minutes later when his squad suddenly attracted a hail of automatic fire. Lantam quickly ran for cover as he felt an all too familiar shudder as his kinetic shields repulsed several shots that would have otherwise found their mark. He hit the ground and rolled behind a nearby rise in the ground as a line of bullets stitched into it. Instinctively, he checked the remaining power on his shields: twenty-five percent—not nearly enough to give him a fighting chance if he had to make another run through direct enemy fire.

A moment later he heard the squad leader shouting into the comm, calling for an orbital strike. Lantam let a low chuckle trickle out of his throat. _Let's see how you like catching this._

About a minute later there was a rumble and a streak of light as the kinetic projectile slammed into the ground towards where the fire was coming from. Lantam huddled close to the ground, keeping his head down as the shockwave sent wind gusting over the rise he was hiding behind. As soon as it died down, he and the rest of his squad began to stand cautiously to check the damage.

He heard the beginnings of a growl amidst the breathing of exertion when he caught sight of a large dark shape approaching low to the ground out of the corner of his eye. Lantam turned his head in time to see a huge dark-furred shape leap into the air, letting out a deafening roar with large jaws lined with intimidating fangs opened to a nearly ninety degree angle, one hand clutching a huge curved knife.

Before he could even begin to raise his assault rifle, the _thing_ stabbed the knife down into one of the turians'; the blade moved at subsonic velocities so the kinetic barriers never engaged. The force of it stabbed through the kinetic padding and fabric and into his carapace almost effortlessly, sending his squadmate to his knees with a scream of agony as blue blood soaked into the armor.

Lantam and the rest of the squad had their assault rifles leveled and firing in the next instant, firing in long-trained precise bursts to keep their weapons from overheating and throwing off their alignment and rate of fire. They advanced slowly as they shot, looking to quickly overwhelm its shields.

The creature's kinetic shields became a blue shimmer as they began to absorb the fire as it ripped the knife back out and began to charge two other turians, who backpedaled hurriedly as they maintained their continuous, disciplined fire. When the shields finally depleted, the alien recoiled as the turians' bullets began shredding into its armor and hands. The two turians it had been charging stopped their retreat and began advancing slowly again, pouring bursts of fire into it.

Eventually the thing gave off a low, deep moan and crumpled to the ground, spilling red blood onto the crushed vegetation. Lantam kept his assault rifle aimed at it as his mandibles sagged away from his mouth in shock. The alien was large, easily three times the weight of a turian, in unfamiliar armor but covered with dark fur otherwise. Its bronze-gold slit-pupilled gaze stared sightlessly out of a face dominated by a muzzle with a wet black nose on the end, with lips were peeled back from a carnivore's fangs. _Red blood, four fingers and one opposable thumb on both... no, on all _four_ hands,_ he thought, noticing that they were on the end of all four limbs of an otherwise bipedal-shaped creature. "What _is_ that?" he blurted before he could stop himself.

"I have no idea," one of the others admitted. "But it charged like a krogan."

"I'm not a xenobiologist," another chimed in, "but I can tell you one thing." He nudged it with a foot. "It still bleeds, and it still dies. That's good enough for me."

There was a grim chuckle at the remark until they all heard a _vwiiip_ sound and one turian fell bonelessly, dead before he hit the ground, as his shields – depleted from the previous ambush – gave way to the hypervelocity shot. Following on its heels they heard the report of the gunshot.

"Sniper!" They all hit the dirt and began making for cover as more bullets – more than could be accounted for than just one gunman – began methodically probing their position. There was a shriek as another bullet found its mark. The squad leader cursed as he began calling for more orbital strikes.

This time there were several streaks of light that poured down onto the snipers' position. Lantam curled up behind his cover as the ground shook beneath him, pummeling him inside his armor. His pressurized cowl automatically muffled the roar of the impacts to protect his hearing.

* * *

"Freya's _tits_," Senior Monitor Luther Tull swore, his voice drowned out by the roar of the orbital bombardment the aliens had called in on the snipers of his tetrarchy. _These bastards sho' like to bomb things,_ he thought, feeling a cold rage building from the center of his chest. A deep breath through the nose and he consciously throttled back his body's building tension.

His entire merarchy and the ghouloon chiliarchy that had been stationed here had been ordered to scatter when the alien force had invaded through the system's mass relay a little under a week ago and begun bombarding the colonial outpost. The Directorates of Land Settlement, Agriculture, Conservancy, and Public Works had all had offices there – along with the usual forces from War and Security – and had been doing the long-term planning of settlement on this new planet. Long-term mainly because it was low priority – the New Territories on Earth and the habitable planet in Alpha Centauri had priority over trans-relay colonies.

They had been harassing the occupying force ever since; sniping their outer sentries, sabotaging the spaceport, etc. Each tetrarchy was operating largely independently of the others, with ghouloon runners providing their only means of communication to coordinate their activities. They had found out quickly that the invaders came down on transmissions _hard_.

Now they were sending out squads to try and winkle out the Draka holdouts, calling down bombardments on the least sign of military resistance. _They got firepower, but they don't got no imagination._ His tetrarch had sent he and his stick around towards the alien squad's rear, keeping their attention fixed towards one direction. So far it had worked, though they were losing the drakensis and ghouloon troopers providing distractions at an infuriating rate.

"Alright," he muttered in a low voice when the roar of the bombardment subsided enough for his stick's drakensis acute hearing to hear him. "Long-range ain't gonna work with those things. We got to get up close and personal like, y'hear? John, y'all run ovah to Monitor Torbogen's stick and tell her to go when we do. We'll all go togethah. Y'all got it? Alright, let's _move_ it people, let's _go_."

* * *

Lantam slowly rose from behind his cover, looking towards the blasted craters where the snipers had been firing from. "I don't think they'll be getting up from that," he remarked idly to himself. He started to turn towards the rest of his squad and, in doing so, was the first to catch the rapid movement out of the corner of his eye – from _behind_ their position!

"Ambush!" he shouted, and crouched low as he opened fire on the advancing aliens. They looked nothing like the brutish creature from before, more like the size of a turian. They wore black armor and clothing, and roundish helmets that flared from behind to cover their necks and a visor over the eyes, but had an opening below that exposed their pale-toned lower faces. They were sprinting forward, running full-tilt at an astonishing speed, bobbing and jinking and weaving as they advanced.

Seeing that their surprise attack had been foiled, they shouted out some sort of battle cry: _"BuLala! BuLala!"_ Some of them threw themselves down into firing positions, returning fire with short, stubby-looking assault rifles while their comrades kept sprinting past them, eager to close with the turian squad before they could call in another orbital strike.

Lantam concentrated on one of the advancing aliens, firing controlled bursts that rapidly depleted its shields, shredded its armor, then tore through its flesh. It fell to the ground and, amazingly, still tried to bring its weapon to bear. The turian soldier fired another burst into it, and the enemy trooper fell bonelessly, twitched once and lay still.

_Tough bastards,_ ran through his mind as he began concentrating on another of the rapidly approaching troopers after the first wave threw themselves into firing positions and began covering the others as they, in turn, got up and began running forward. _Too many of them. Some of them are going to reach us._

The turian rolled as bullets began to make his kinetic shields shudder, and found one of the enemy soldiers practically on top of him as he got to his feet. "_BuLala!_" it shouted as it sliced the edge of its hand towards his neck. Lantam, calling upon his unarmed combat training, grabbed the wrist and arm of his enemy with his three-fingered hands, then turned as used its momentum against it as he threw it through the air to land on its back. Even then he noticed the wide-eyed look it had on its face as it went flying past the turian.

It quickly bounced back to its feet, the puffy lips of its mouth twisted into a scowl. Absurdly, he noted that it looked a little like an asari even as it circled him, falling into the unmistakable stance of its own sort of unarmed combat training as it said something in its own incomprehensible language: "You is one ugly muthafuckah."

Guessing that it wasn't a compliment, Lantam and his opponent slowly circled one another even as the sound of gunfire began to die around them. The alien darted forward with blinding speed, clamping a hand like a pneumatic press onto his wrist. The turian grimaced and broke the hold, then found himself desperately fending off a series of grabs and blows that moved with terrifying speed. Finally, it managed to get a hold on both hands and its mouth twisted into what he knew would have been a smug smirk on an asari.

Lantam stared at the expression with his unreadable avian eyes for a moment, then abruptly smashed the carapace of his head into the alien's face. His head rang with the impact, even as his opponent cursed as red blood began leaking from the nose jutting out of the middle of its face. _He's __got one hard head,_ ran dazedly through his mind. Then a shriek of pain as the alien broke his arm, then flipped him onto his back in turn.

He looked up to see himself surrounded by the alien soldiers. _The rest of them stopped to watch._ Another glance showed that no other turians were on their feet. _They just stopped to _watch_ their comrade fight instead of helping him?_ Lantam wondered. _What kind of aliens are these?

* * *

_

"Looks like he got a lick in theah, Luther boy." Senior Monitor Torbogen was standing there with her arms folded across her chest, grinning cruelly.

Luther Tull took his hand away from his injured nose and glared at her, then turned his gaze down on the bird-like alien at his feet. He started taking his anger out on the luckless soldier, kicking and stomping him until he was curled into a fetal position and coughing up blood. A grunt as he noticed what color it was.

"Blue-blooded. Mus' be a von Shrakenberg or somethin'," he joked with a smirk as he grabbed his Holbars and put a round through the alien's head. "Come on, let's get back to cover befo' mo' of these things git here."


	14. Chapter 14

**ABOARD DASCS _DIOCLETIAN_**

**BEYOND THE ORBIT OF VRITRA 2**

**VRITRA SYSTEM, LOCAL CLUSTER**

**APRIL 12, 2003**

Merarch Gudrun von Shrakenberg's eyes went to the electrodetection screen as her cruiser dropped out of FTL. Blue-shifted energy waves radiated off of it and the other ships of the Domination's III Fleet as they returned to sublight speeds, igniting the darkness of space like a flare.

"This is Arch-Strategos Teesdale." The voice was calmly controlled, the experienced tones of long-service. He was, Gudrun knew, one of the most experienced officers in the Domination's space fleet; Teesdale had been in space almost as long as _humans_ had been in space, and won commendations for his role in the Final War. "Proceed to the Vritra 2 and engage the alien fleet. Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race," Gudrun replied reflexively, along with the rest of the officers in the circular command chamber. Her eyes flicked around at them all for a moment. _All of them these New Race bastards,_ she thought, then caught herself. It was amazing how habits of mind stayed with you, long after the circumstances had made them irrelevant.

She was pushing sixty-six herself, and Teesdale was older still. _This is probably the last war we human Draka are goin' to be fightin'. _Most of the _Homo sapiens_ still in the Domination's military were older officers, and many of them had been killed in the Final War. A good portion of the III Fleet had New Race, or _Homo drakensis,_ commanders. _The last hurrah for us Old Domination types,_ she thought whimsically. _The future's goin' belong to them._ With a wicked grin: _Leastways we get to blow up some aliens before we go._

Gudrun watched with frank envy as the black and crimson delta-shape of a first generation purpose-built mass effect drive cruiser pulled slightly ahead of the _Diocletian._ Her ship had been built with a mirror-matter drive in the mid-'90s and had been retrofitted with a mass effect core later on. Mass effect fields allowed ships to built with an eye more towards aesthetics than just pure function, and the sleek arrowhead design had been popular in the Domination since the advent of scramjets. That was aside from the fact that the wing-body design was helpful inside an atmosphere as well. _Sharp, sleek... predatory. Kinda like the Race's ideal._

The Wasp-class stingfighters launched from the larger cruisers and the single dreadnought, the latter built around a mass accelerator cannon that spanned from its forward point to near the rear thrusters. They pulled ahead of the fleet and made for the alien ships. They were blunt pyramids tapering from the thrusters at the rear to the crew compartment at the apex with room for exactly two crew. Slim tubes rose from each corner of the rear with asymmetric spikes flared out to guide the new disruptor torpedoes they carried.

She began to breath easier as they pulled farther away. _Those damn things are_ dangerous, she thought. Besides possessing a warhead that created random and unstable mass effect fields when triggered, the torpedoes used mass-increasing fields while in flight to make them too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repel. That meant they had to be 'cold-launched', or released before their thrusters ignited, to prevent damage to the stingfighter. Firing them while amidst an allied fleet didn't bear thinking about.

The alien ships, fewer in number than those of the Draka, began to turn to face the oncoming threat. _Can't fault 'em for guts._ Their ships were reminiscent of a raptor's—or bird-of-prey's—beak, with the main part holding a mass accelerator main gun, and two relatively stubby wing-like portions extending from the rear of the craft. They opened fire with their mass accelerator cannons as soon they brought them to bear on the Draka fleet, almost like a long-trained ballet in their timing and precision.

The Draka warships returned fire as the stingfighters released their disruptor torpedoes, flipped end for end, and kicked in their thrusters back towards their fleet. Behind them, the torpedoes continued their parent crafts' original course, then ignited their thrusters as they locked onto their targets among the alien fleet and sped towards them.

Turrets placed along the exterior of the alien ships' hulls began firing lasers to engage the torpedoes and stingfighters. Several were intercepted and downed, but then their rate of fire began to slow as heat began to build within their sinks and radiators and their cool-down times became longer and longer. Eventually, here and there, torpedoes got through and their warheads detonated, causing rapid asymmetrical mass changes that ripped into their target's hull.

Then the mass accelerator slugs began tearing into both fleets, making kinetic barriers flash as they tried to intercept the hyperaccelerated projectiles. Several of the Drakas' older ships were the first to have their barriers fail, and once they were unprotected the aliens' slugs tore them apart.

Gudrun clenched her jaw as the _Diocletian_ tried to weave itself through the chaos of the battle, the ship jerking sharply around her as an alien metal slug tore into its barriers. "White Christ, this is _not_ like the fightin' back in the solar system," she ground out between gritted teeth. Back when they had had only the Yankees to worry about, the ships had been of weaker materials that were dealt damage from regular rail guns, regular missiles and lasers. The aliens' kinetic barriers and laser defense systems made dealing damage a lot more difficult—and it was obvious that they had a lot more experience at this type of warfare than the Domination did.

She was giving serious consideration to how she could get her cruiser close enough to the alien fleet so that its suicide bomb could do the greatest amount of damage—damned if she was going to let the Race get defeated by an enemy with fewer numbers—when the main gun of the _Charlemagne_, the III Fleet's lone dreadnought, finally lined up on one of the alien ships and fired. The target was sent slowly spinning by the impact even as its kinetic barriers flared and died. The enemy ship's thrusters had only just started trying to stabilize itself when the slugs of the other ships in the Fleet tore into it, tearing it apart in a huge explosion as its reactor went critical.

The other alien ships seemed to pause, as if they couldn't believe what had just happened, then resumed fire as they began to pull away from Vritra 2's orbit. The Draka fired after them while their stingfighters began pressing home their own attacks, the alien ships defensive turrets having overheated long ago. A few more of the aliens' ships were destroyed as they pulled back, then they jumped to FTL, effectively ending the engagement.

Gudrun slumped back into her command chair, not caring to think about how close the battle had come. She stopped herself from jumping as Arch-Strategos Teesdale began speaking over the comm: "The alien fleet has withdrawn towards the system's mass relay. We have reseized control over the Vritra system." A pause. "Our losses have been heavy, but fear of death has never held the Race back. All frigates are to establish picket positions at the relay and beyond Vritra 2's orbit. All cruisers, establish orbit around the planet. We're pretty sure they just left their ground force behind." She could almost hear Teesdale's bared teeth. "Now we get some payback."

* * *

It was two weeks later when a lone probe appeared through the Vritra system's mass relay. It transmitted messages in basic mathematical formulas, and its construction vastly different from that of the aliens who had been ejected from the system. When the Draka responded in kind, the probe returned through the relay and was followed by a ship holding representatives from two other alien species: blue-skinned humanoids and tall, lanky amphibians.

They said they were representatives of a galactic government calling itself the Citadel Council, and wished to mediate an end to the conflict between the newly emerged Draka and the Turian Hierarchy, the species that made up most of the Citadel's peacekeeping forces. A conflict that had begun over a misunderstanding...

* * *

**CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE**

**ARCHONA, EARTH**

**SOL SYSTEM, LOCAL CLUSTER**

**MAY 5, 2003**

Eric von Shrakenberg awaited the arrival of the asari diplomat with both anticipation and wariness. The short war with the alien race they now knew as the turians had been a near run thing; the Citizen Force and the ghouloon janissaries had proven its worth against their occupying force on the surface of Vritra 2, but the turian fleet had been a tougher nut to crack. _If not for the_ Charlemagne, _I do wonder if we would have won that battle,_ ran through his mind. The dreadnought's main gun had proven its power, but the recoil had overwhelmed the mass effect field the ship had had in place to handle it, jarring the crew and disrupting several onboard systems. It had been sheer luck that the turians had withdrawn, as the _Charlemagne_ had been in no shape to continue fighting.

_Not the first time we Draka have had to bluff while holdin' a lesser hand,_ he thought as he straightened the lace frills at his cuffs and adjusted his silk cravat. _Now stop woolgatherin', Eric. Time to represent yo' nation and yo' people to the galaxy._

His aide stepped into the room. "Excellence, the Honorable Tevos, diplomat and representative for the Asari Republics and the Citadel Council."

Eric levered himself to his feet painfully as the asari glided into the room. He found himself blinking, momentarily startled at the sight of the alien. It was one thing to see recordings and receive reports, another altogether to see an asari with his own eyes. She was blue-skinned, as he'd expected, and wore a high-necked red and white dress that flowed down to her ankles, accentuating a distinctly female form. Her gloves exposed her fingers and thumbs and stretched up along her arms to her biceps.

As Tevos bowed her head respectfully, he caught sight of the wavy folds of sculpted skin that were a startling reminder that she was an alien when the rest of her looked so female. "Excellence," she said, her voice holding a sort of lyrical quality. "I thank you for allowing me to meet with you. It is my hope that we can get past these unfortunate events between your species and the turians and welcome you into the greater galactic community."

Eric took a moment to admire her command of English—or Talk as many were calling the Draka dialect nowadays—before inclining his head in return. "Lady Tevos. Might I offer you hospitality before we proceed? Ah'm given to understand that yo' biology is, ah, similar to our own."

"Thank you, Excellence. I would be honored to accept your gesture."

A dark-brown wench entered the room and knelt smoothly to offer a glass on a tray to the asari. She was in her late teens, movements gracefully polished as the silver and crystal in her hands. She wore a tunic of colorful _dashiki_, hand-embroidered cotton from the Zanzibar coasts. The asari accepted the crystal glass, but her gaze lingered on the serf as she left the room—especially on the orange identity code tattooed behind her left ear.

"Constantia wine," Eric remarked as he gestured the alien diplomat to the seat in front of his desk. "Only one estate in the entire Domination produces it, down in our Western Cape province. It's preserved today as a historical landmark by our Land Settlement Directorate."

Tevos sipped from the glass after a moment's hesitation, seemed to consider, then nodded appreciatively. "Quite pleasant," was her verdict.

He inclined his head in acknowledgment of the compliment, then composed himself as she set the glass aside. _Now we get down to business._

"Before we begin, Excellence," the asari began, "am I given to understand that you hold your fellow Draka as slaves?"

"Serfs," Eric corrected. "It also isn't quite co'rect to term them 'fellow Draka'. That name is held in reserve fo' our Citizens." He watched her face carefully. "Do yo' people take exception to such a practice?"

Tevos' expression remained unreadable as she considered her reply. Abstractly, Eric admired her self-control. _Wotan, is this _still_ goin' to be an albatross about our necks?_

"The asari, personally, do not utilize such a practice," the diplomat finally answered. "Nor do we or the Council normally condone it.

"However," she continued as the Draka began to have a sinking feeling, "we have been known to make allowances for species for whom such a practice is a cultural institution. One such species, the Batarian Hegemony, practices slavery yet has an embassy on the Citadel. Though they do not, admittedly, practice it in as genteel a manner as your species does."

Eric felt himself relax slightly, but he still noted the outward mask her face held. _Their Council may make allowances, but I don' think Miss Tevos approves personally._

"Moving on to the events that have brought me here, I have been instructed by the Council to extend their sincere apologies over the misunderstanding that led to the recent hostilities. The Turian Hierarchy maintains the majority share of our Citadel Fleet, our peacekeeping force, and were... perhaps overly enthusiastic in enforcing the prohibition on activating unmapped mass relays."

"That's one way of puttin' it," Eric replied, raising an eyebrow fractionally. The Draka expedition fleet had been fired upon without warning while out exploring, indeed trying to activate a mass relay when the turian patrol fleet had encountered them. "Do the turians commonly open fire on every species who begin explorin' they surroundin's, or were we fo'tunate enough to be an exception?"

The asari pretended not to notice the heavy sarcasm. "Rest assured, Excellence, that we are prepared to have the Turian Hierarchy levy reparations to the Domination of the Draka for their overzealousness in the prosecution of their duties.

"In addition, I am also here to formally extend an invitation to yourself and, through you, to the Draka as a whole for formal incorporation into Citadel space. I must caution you, however, that doing so requires that the Draka must abide by the Citadel Conventions which regulate the use of weapons of mass destruction, categorized as weapons that can cause environmental alteration to a habitable world. As large as the galaxy is such worlds are relatively rare, and cannot be replaced for millions of years."

Eric smiled. "Lady Tevos, ah'm certain-sure such a measure would be acceptable to mahself and mah people. We've seen firsthand the horrors of such weapons, and no wish to see any habitable worlds laid to waste."

Tevos smiled warmly in response and inclined her head. "That is gratifying to hear, Excellence. Perhaps a representative for your government could be sent to the Citadel? There are other points that will have to be clarified, and in time perhaps your species will gain an embassy. We will—"

She fell silent when the Draka held up a hand. "Wait." Eric leaned forward over his desk, watching the asari. "Gain an embassy 'in time'?" he echoed. "Ah'm not sho' I like the sound of that."

The asari's expression became one of regret. "Unfortunately, Excellence, embassies are reserved for those species that have made a significant contribution to Citadel space, and are important enough to be consulted on matters of galactic politics. Your species is newly emerged onto the galactic stage and has not, as of yet, made any such contribution."

Eric's expression tightened. "I see," he replied coolly.

Tevos seemed to notice the Archon's displeasure. "I should also inform you, Excellence," she continued, maintaining her civil tones, "that those species who do not accept incorporation into Citadel space are unable to establish any form of relations with its associate species, be they diplomatic, cultural or economic."

Eric clenched his jaw slightly while maintaining a outward facade of calm. _An embargo, pretty much,_ he thought. _We'd be isolated an' forced to explore the galaxy by ourselves while facin' a hostile galactic government._ He knew his people weren't afraid of being branded pariahs—far from it. But though the Draka were able to match the turians militarily planetside, he recalled how difficult even a small portion of those turian ships had been. _And it's not like our troops can go _marchin'_ from planet to planet._

He watched the asari diplomat, admiring the cool determination underlying her civil facade. _We're too weak to oppose them directly._ _Besides, we've already set the New Race and the new breed of serfs, the _Homo servus_, in motion; the Yankees have been exiled into the unexplored space of the galaxy; the solar system is _ours_. I've wanted to set the Draka free from a life based on death, and we finally have that chance. Giving that chance to my people is the last gift I can give them as Archon._

"Very well," he said finally. "Ah think that we can move fo'ward on that basis." He nodded in reply to the asari's smile, then continued. "However, now that we're puttin' all our cards on the table, ah should let you know that we Draka are not the only ones who have begun explorin' the galaxy."

Tevos listened as the Domination's Archon explained, then nodded slowly. "Yes," she replied. "I think I know of whom you speak of. We've been receiving... unusual reports in recent months."

* * *

**JEFFERSON, SAMOTHRACE**

**INVICTUS SYSTEM, EXODUS CLUSTER**

**MAY 20, 2003**

Frederick Lefarge was going over the latest reports from the Naval Forces frigates patrolling the frontiers of the space they had explored when his phone beeped. He set the papers down and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he keyed the touchplate. Cindy insisted he needed to start using reading glasses, but he remained stubborn. "Lefarge here."

"General Lefarge, this is MacDonald." The thin line of the admiral's mustache had begun graying towards the same color as the thinning hair cropped close to the sides and back of his skull.

"Admiral," Lefarge acknowledged, "to what do I owe the pleasure?" _Probably another report on a batarian pirate nest squashed._ The Strategic Studies Institute, the successor to the OSS, had pried the name of the four-eyed race out of their captives, the race whose criminals seemed to infest a large portion of the galaxy. _He sure likes to report each one of those personally. _Not that he had any love lost for slavers himself, but he wasn't as... enthusiastic as MacDonald was.

"Sir, report just came in from the Demos system relay. A probe of unknown make came through and started transmitting basic mathematical equations. The scientists say that it appears to be some attempt at communication."

Lefarge's eyebrows rose. _That's new._ "Really?" A pause as he considered. "Very well. Let our people reply, and let's see what we've got here."


	15. Chapter 15

**ABOARD DASCS _BELISARIUS_**

**WIDOW SYSTEM**

**SERPENT NEBULA**

**SEPTEMBER 1, 2003**

"Citadel Control says we're cleared fo' landin'," the helmsman reported over the shipboard intercom. "ETA to dockin' is fifteen minutes."

Helene Renston stood at the _Belisarius'_ primary viewport, staring out at the enormous space station that served as the cultural, economic, and political center of the galaxy. From here, several thousand kilometers away, it resembled a five-pointed star: a quintet of long, thick arms extending out from a hollow central ring. She could see her own transparent reflection when she focused her attention to the armorglass in front of her: violet eyes and yellow hair pulled back in a loose ponytail framing the regular and somewhat angular features that were the hallmark of a drakensis.

Helene marveled at its sheer size; the middle ring was ten kilometers in diameter, while each arm was twenty-five kilometers long and five kilometers in breadth. Great metropolises had been constructed along each arm, entire cities built into the station's multi-level interior.

"The _Hyperion's_ nothin' compared to that thing," a voice said behind her. The drakensis turned to see Dietrich Pope, her superior in the diplomatic team sent by the Foreign Affairs Directorate to the Citadel, approaching the viewport. He was far older than her own thirty years, around the same age as the Archon. But unlike the four-time decorated Eurasian War veteran, Pope had spent his life in service to the Domination within Foreign Affairs and was one of the few Draka alive to still remember dealing with numerous nations instead of just the old Alliance—a distinction deemed invaluable in dealing with the multi-species Citadel.

The elder human walked up the viewport next to her, his cane clicking on the floor, and stopped to gaze out at the Citadel and the surrounding nebula. He rested both hands on the ivory handle carved into a dragon's head with emerald eyes, topping a gleaming dark tropical hardwood cane with an engraved silver tip. The lights from the nebula shone on his shaven skull, and hazel eyes of disconcerting shrewdness stared out from a wrinkled face, giving him somewhat of a reptilian aspect. _Gives yo' an idea why the Yankees call us Snakes,_ she thought.

As the Draka frigate approached the Citadel, they flew past the numerous ships of the Citadel Fleet, a joint force of turian, salarian, and asari warships that were always on patrol in the vicinity. Helene pursed her lips slightly as she considered. _The Citadel's located at the heart of a major mass relay junction deep inside this dense nebula cloud. This place is damn near impregnable._ It had several layers of defense: the nebula was difficult to navigate—it would slow any enemy fleets and make it difficult for them to launch any sort of organized attack. The several dozen mass relays in the vicinity also meant that reinforcements from virtually every region of the galaxy was only minutes away.

The ships of the Citadel Fleet weren't the only vessels in the area. The Serpent Nebula was the nexus of the galaxy's mass relay network—all roads eventually led to the Citadel. Traffic here was constant; congestion was particularly heavy at the free-floating discharge stations. Generating mass effect fields necessary to run at FTL speeds caused a powerful charge to build up inside a ship's drive core. Left unchecked the core would oversaturate, resulting in a massive energy burst being released through the hull—a burst powerful enough to cook anyone on board who wasn't properly grounded, burn out all electronic systems, and even fuse the metal bulkheads.

To prevent such a calamity most ships were required to discharge their drive cores every twenty to thirty hours. Typically this was done by grounding on a planet or dispersing the buildup through close proximity to the magnetic field of a large stellar body, such as a sun or gas giant. However, there were no astrological bodies of sufficient size near the Citadel. Instead, a ring of specially designed docking stations allowed ships to link in and release the energy in their drive cores before continuing on using conventional sub-FTL drives.

Fortunately, the _Belisarius_ had discharged its core when it had first arrived in the region over a half hour ago. Since then it had been in a holding pattern, waiting for the clearance they had just now received.

The silence lengthened as the two Draka, human and drakensis, took in the view as the Citadel drew slowly closer, looming ever larger in the viewport. The lights from the cities along the arms twinkled and shone, their piercing illumination a counterpoint to the hazy, swirling brightness of the nebula cloud that served as the backdrop to the scene.

"You know why you're here?" Pope asked suddenly, his eyes still turned towards the view.

Startled, it took Helene a moment to gather her thoughts. "I assumed it was because of mah drakensis heritage, mixed with my havin' the longest service record of anyone of the New Race in Foreign Affairs."

Pope turned his head to regard her for a moment. "That's part of it. Those pheromones of yours might work on the ferals, the Yankees, but it's likely they'd be useless against an alien species." He turned his face back towards the view. "Yo' here, Miz Renston, because yo' goin' to be the senior diplomat fo' our negotiations."

The drakensis' eyes went wide with surprise. "Me? Ah'm honored, o' course, but..."

A thin smile creased the senior diplomat's face. "Yo' skill is part of it, but you were right when yo' mentioned yo' drakensis heritage." He turned to look her square in the eyes. "Miz Renston, you _are_ the face of the Domination that's goin' to be joinin' into the greater galaxy. The New Domination is made up of you drakensis, of the ghouloons, even the servus. The genetically hardwired Final Society we, yo' human forebears, have been seekin' since the Land-Taking, if not exactly in those terms.

"Yo' not human, not _Homo sapiens,_" he continued. "That's the Yankees that the Council went and dug up from under the rock they went an' crawled under. We makin' it clear, right off, that the Draka are a _different_ species from them. Othahwise, who knows what notions them asari and salarians might get in they head-tentacled, bug-eyed heads? Demands that we an' the Yankees form a single government before we join Citadel space?"

A laugh, unexpected, barked out of Helene's throat before she could stop herself. A wry smirk twisted her mouth as she considered the possibility. "Yeah, ah could see how well _that_ would turn out."

The smile on Pope's face got a bit wider as he shared in her amusement. "Yeah. But these are _aliens_ we're talkin' about. They don't know 'bout the history we and the Yankees shared even befo' the Final War. Wotan, we don't even know if they really _think_ like we do. We and the Yankees had a hard enough time understandin' one anothah, and we _were_ the same species! That's why yo' goin' to be representin' the Domination. I'm heah just as an adviser, lendin' you mah experience. We human Draka will be gone soon enough. We're just goin' to set y'all on yo' way befo' we go."

Helene considered, then nodded firmly. "You can count on me. I won't let the State and the Race down."

A proud smile stretched across Pope's face at the determined expression on the young aquiline face. "With Citizens like you, Miz Renston, I get the feelin' we goin' to be leavin' the Domination in good hands."

Helene felt a flush of pleasure spread on her skin, and consciously throttled it back before it could reach her face. Touched, she nodded silently to her... _Aide,_ she had to remind herself. They both turned back to the viewport and shared the view in companionable silence as the _Belisarius_ slowly approached a dock and landed.

About ten minutes later, Helene and Pope strode through the frigate's airlock and into the tunnel that connected the ship to the Citadel's dock with two armored ghouloon troopers marching at their backs. The transgenes peered about as they exited the tunnel into the wide space overlooking a spectacular view of the cities along the station's arms, hooting softly in amazement.

"Ooh," one of them burbled, slapping a hand at his chest for emphasis. "Big big. _Big_."

An asari clad in a high-necked grey and black dress with sleeves to her wrists approached them as they emerged, accompanied by a salarian, one of the amphibian species that shared the Council with the asari and turians, and another asari. They were both clad in blue and black armor, the uniform of what they had learned was the station's law enforcement arm, Citadel Security. The two C-Sec officers eyed the two ghouloons with both curiosity and caution. The ghouloons, for their part, blinked slowly as they took sight of the unfamiliar species, and the wet black noses ruffled slightly to take their alien scents.

As the asari approached the two Draka, a shadow fell over them all. Helene found herself looking back instinctively, and took an involuntary step back in surprise. Her ears wanted to lay flat against her skull as she looked up at the massive ship floating past the dock, a sleek blue shape with lines of residential lighting running along the main circular portion of the hull and the four arms that extended in the cardinal directions from its rear. _Shitfire, that's big,_ her mind gibbered. It was easily at least four times larger than the Domination's Charlemagne-class dreadnoughts.

The asari followed their gazes. "That is the _Destiny Ascension,_" she informed them. "The new flagship of the Citadel Fleet. It was completed recently and arrived less than a week ago from its launch from the shipyards at Thessia, the asari homeworld."

Pope, for his part, remained stoic as he watched the asari warship drift by. Before it was out of sight, he turned back to the asari in the dress and inclined his head. "An impressive ship," he remarked, his voice carefully neutral. _We can't let ourselves be intimidated,_ he thought. It was an old tactic, trying to overawe the ignorant foreigners. Helene had given away more than he would have liked, but she was recovering quickly and in fine form, nodding in her turn to the asari diplomat.

"Ah'm Helene Renston of the Foreign Affairs Directorate, fo' the Domination of the Draka," the drakensis said. "This is mah aide Dietrich Pope."

The asari bowed her head forward respectfully. "I am Benezia T'soni, of the Asari Republics. I am to be the mediator of the summit meeting between your people and the Samothracians."

* * *

Benezia felt regret as she saw the involuntary reaction the the younger Draka, the one whose species was known as drakensis, to the sight of the _Destiny Ascension_. Such intimidation tactics were crude to her way of thinking; the asari rarely found themselves forced to resort to such.

_But from my studies, it is the sort of gesture that these Draka will respect,_ she thought. She had spent the few months since she had volunteered for this position studying the two societies on the opposing sides for the coming summit. Histories, geographies, statistics. And she had also read the works of literature that were said to provide the underpinnings for the Draka society: Thomas Carlyle's _Philosophy of Mastery_, Friedrich Nietzsche's _The Will to Power_, George Fitzhugh's _Imperial Destiny_, and Arthur de Gobineau's _Inequality of Human Races_. She had finished with the work that seemed to guide their society the most, the chillingly alien _Meditations of Elvira Naldorssen_.

The asari matron suppressed a shiver as she recalled one passage: 'The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons; because we must and because we can. And yet of the two forces the second is the greater; we do this because we choose to do it. By the sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the Earth, and in so doing remake themselves. We shall conquer and beat the Nations of the Earth into the dust and reforge them in our self wrought Image; the Final Society without weakness or mercy, hard and pure. Our descendants will walk the hillside of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more between them and their naked will than a wolf has. _Then_ there will be Gods in the Earth.'

_Such a ruthless and... primal people,_ Benezia thought. They were unlike any other known species in the galaxy, though they seemed to have minor similarities to the krogan and the batarians. _And they are the only species besides the krogan to stand up to the turians in battle, while the Samothracians have been clearing the Attican Traverse of pirates despite their small numbers._ The extraordinary military capabilities of both sides were one reason why the Council was so interested in this summit. They both had the potential to provide great contributions to Citadel space, as well as the potential to wreak great amounts of havoc if their perennial feud wasn't brought under control.

_You always felt the asari should have a greater role in shaping galactic events,_ she told herself. _This has the possibility to shape the galaxy in a way unseen since the turians joined the Council after the Krogan Rebellions._ A bleak smile. _No pressure._

"If you will all follow me, I'll show you to the residences we have set up for your stay at the Citadel," Benezia said aloud as she headed for the elevator. She hoped she wouldn't have to make too much conversation; the elevator rides were notoriously long. _Perhaps the music won't be so bad, or there will be an interesting news report,_ she thought optimistically as the doors to the cylindrical space slid close behind them.


	16. Chapter 16

**CITADEL**

**WIDOW SYSTEM**

**SERPENT NEBULA**

**SEPTEMBER 2, 2003**

Miguel Hiero followed one of the C-Sec officers that had been assigned as his escorts through the streets of the Wards, the cities along the Citadel's arms, to the public transport depot. The turian nodded to the other officer on duty and showed his ID, then led Miguel onto the high-speed elevator used to shuttle people from the lower levels of the Wards—the cities along the station's arms—to the Presidium high above.

Despite the velocity of the elevator, it still left him time to think as it traversed the great distance; he maintained a calm exterior as he felt his stomach churn. It was one thing to be virtually alone on this enormous station filled with aliens—the Alliance refugees' first contact with an alien race had been anything but amiable—but another altogether to know that he was the chief envoy representing what was left of humanity, of his entire _species_.

Miguel had been a politician back on Earth, preparing for a run for a US Senate seat in Sonora. He had been on vacation to Ceres with his children when his mother, President Carmen Hiero of the United States of America, had sent an urgent tightbeam message that held only one word: _Stay_. A day later the Final War had broken out, and he had huddled around the vid with his wife and children as reports of the major cities of the Alliance for Democracy disappearing in nuclear fire flowed in. As a Draka fleet had even attempted an attack on the very asteroid-habitat they were in.

_And now I am going to meet some Snakes face-to-face, _he thought grimly. The monsters that had killed his mother, his family, his _country_, and exiled he and the rest of humanity into the unknown void of interstellar space via a virtually untested piece of alien technology. The ones who had branded the name Hiero with the stigma of the Fall; nobody was completely sure what had occurred on Earth in the leadup to the Final War, but he _knew_ his mother and that she would have done her utmost to bring the Domination down.

A glance aside at the avian turian officer, another to a blue-skinned asari. _And these... things expect us to just make _peace_ with them?_ he thought incredulously. Alien. It really brought the word home, down deep into his core. He had heard vague references to dangers these Citadel species had fought, things called krogan and rachni, but they were spoken of as enemies defeated long ago. _These things don't now what it is like to have living, breathing evil always looming, constantly pushing, never even _trying_ to cover up the fact that they will enslave you and everyone you love at the slightest opportunity._

Lefarge had sent him here because he could see the advantages of being part of Citadel space and under the economic and military umbrella of a galactic government; Samothrace was still too small to think they could last very long by themselves. But even he hadn't held any illusions about establishing a lasting peace settlement with the Snakes. He had sent him here to shift the war between humanity and the Snakes' New Race, the drakensis, onto a different battlefield, a diplomatic one. _And one where _we_ have always held the advantage._

When the elevator finally reached the Presidium and Miguel exited along with his C-Sec escorts, his step faltered for a moment as he took in the sight. The Wards were sprawling metropolises filled with crowds of bustling aliens of a sometimes alarming variety. The Presidium, on the other hand, seemed to have been designed to evoke a vast parkland ecosystem. A large freshwater lake dominated the center of the level, rolling fields of verdant grass ran the length of its banks. Fabricated breezes, gentle as spring zephyrs, caused ripples on the lake and spread the scent of the thousands of planted trees and flowers to every corner of the Presidium. Artificial sunlight streamed down from a simulated blue sky filled with white, puffy clouds. The illusion was so perfect that most people, including Miguel, couldn't distinguish it from the real thing.

The buildings where the business of government was conducted seemed to be similarly constructed with an eye to natural aesthetics. Set along the gently curving arch that marked the edge of the station's central ring, they blended unobtrusively into the background. Broad, open walkways meandered back and forth from building to building, echoing the landscape of the carefully manufactured pastoral scene at the Presidium's heart—the perfect combination of form and function.

But what separated it most from the Wards was the absence of the rushing, crushing crowds. Access to the Citadel's inner ring was generally restricted to government and military officials, or those with legitimate business with their species' embassy. Not that it was empty, of course. The bureaucracy necessary to run a galactic government was also necessarily large. Thousands of members from every race that maintained an embassy on the Presidium strode, waddled or even floated along the walkways and between the buildings. But the numbers here were a far cry from the millions who populated the Wards.

Miguel looked around with interest as he followed the C-Sec officers towards the Citadel Tower, where the Council met with ambassadors petitioning them on matters of interstellar policy and law; the summit between his people and the Snakes was to take place on one of its lower levels. The Tower's spire rose in majestic solitude above the rest of the buildings, barely visible at the point where the curve of the central ring created a false horizon.

He passed members of various species as he progressed along the walkway. Squat, rotund volus; huge, lumbering elcor; the floating, jellyfish-like hanar. And, of course, asari, salarians, and turians. He caught sight of some batarians along the way, but the C-Sec officers discreetly steered the human envoy around them, Miguel noted with amusement tinged with a savage satisfaction. _Slaving _putos_._ Inwardly, he now knew that the batarian pirate bands the Samothracian Naval Forces had been battling had nothing to do with their central government, the Batarian Hegemony. But logic had nothing to do with the loathing he held for the four-eyed race that had gotten far too many human colonists, sailors, and marines killed.

Despite all the varied aliens around him, Miguel still pointed and asked, "What's _that?_" _That_ was an fat green little alien with too many sticklike arms and legs. It reminded him of nothing so much as an oversized aphid.

The asari C-Sec officer looked over, then smiled at the human diplomat. "That is a keeper, Mr. Hiero," she replied. "They are the race that maintains the Citadel."

Hiero considered that a moment, then shot another look at the keeper before looking back to the asari. "Wait, they are the only race that maintains the Citadel? How did that happen? Do they have an embassy?" Thoughts of a slave race maintaining the Citadel went through his mind. _Are we the only non-slavers in the entire _galaxy_?_ he thought with exasperation.

The asari laughed pleasantly. "I'm sorry, everyone here is so used to them." She waited for the human's nod before continuing. "The keepers are only found on the Citadel, and were here when the asari first arrived here nearly two thousand six hundred years ago. We have found no way to communicate with them, and any attempt is met with mute passive resistance. Attempts to study them or interrupt their duties results in some sort of self-destruction with an internally released acid. Some question whether they are truly an intelligent race."

Miguel's brow furrowed as he looked back at the keeper again, working silently on a holographic interface with single-minded focus. "That seems... odd. Has no one thought to take over their duties in maintaining this station? If you don't mind my saying, it seems an incredible risk letting an unknown race have such control."

The turian C-Sec officer a few steps ahead of them gave a short grunt of laughter. "That's what my people said when we first arrived too."

The asari shrugged her shoulders. "The inner workings of the Citadel are inaccessible to anyone but the keepers, and is presumably the area where most of the key systems for the station are accessed. The keepers have been known for the occasional odd action, like rearranging someone's office, but have not displayed any sort of malicious intent."

"But.." Miguel shook his head. _These people don't seem to have any healthy sense of paranoia at _all_!_

The asari noticed his incredulity. "The Citadel lies at the heart of the mass relay network," she explained. "If we did not occupy this station, someone else would. We have done our best to display our own non-aggression to the keepers by enforcing non-interference with them or their duties. I am also given to understand we have procedures in place to evacuate the Council and other key officials should the station come under threat." A warm smile. "Believe me, Mr. Hiero, we have considered every possibility. They maintain the Citadel, and we leave them alone. It has remained an equitable arrangement for over two millenia."

Miguel, only partly mollified, shot another suspicious glance at the keeper as they continued on. He noticed the next half dozen keepers they walked past as well. Soon, however, they seemed to blend into the background and he began ignoring them for other sights. They were so ubiquitous on the station, and mostly so unobtrusive and unassuming, that most people tended to just take them for granted.

As he neared the base of the Tower, he noticed a scale-model statue of a mass relay off to his left. Having seen actual ones during the Exodus from the Sol system and on his trip to the Citadel, Miguel was struck by the amount of detail that had gone into it. He started to ask about it, but in the end remained silent. _I can ask questions like a tourist later. I have a summit to get to._

The guards standing at the Tower's only entrance eyed Miguel with interested curiosity as they approached, but were all professionalism while they confirmed their identities. They stepped into the transparent elevator and began to ascend. The whole of the Presidium soon spread out beneath him as he shot upward. Within a short time the elevator stopped and opened onto a corridor of sterile off-white walls and floor, and lined with blue doors with a dark-grey seam running diagonally through the middle of them.

One of those doors slid open, with the halves retracting towards the ceiling and the floor, as they approached. The room inside was filled with members of every species that had an embassy on the Citadel. His fellow human envoy, Margaret Myrice, turned towards the door and nodded to him as he stepped inside. Miguel returned the nod, then turned his attention as the asari mediator Benezia T'soni, who had met them when they first arrived on the station, approached him with a friendly smile. "It is good to see you again, Mr. Hiero," she said with a respectful bow of her head. "You are the last to arrive. Your fellow envoy and those of the Draka have already assembled."

Miguel started to thank her, but then he caught sight of the Snakes on the other side of the table, with two unarmed ghouloons standing against the wall behind them. The words died in his throat as he took in the sight of his peoples' hated enemy, dressed in the archaic overly fancy clothes they seemed to love so much. The younger female was obviously one of their new drakensis, with the chiseled looks and slightly different play of muscles and joints. She was eyeing him like a hawk swooping down on a field mouse. Her nostrils flared slightly as she tried to take his scent, then her mouth twisted slightly in distaste.

Miguel smiled back at her, what would seem like a friendly expression to those unacquainted to the history between their peoples. He had taken a liberal dousing of pheromone neutralizer before he had set off for this meeting, in addition to a treatment of the anti-pheromonal concoction the scientists on Samothrace had cooked up for them before they left to counteract a drakensis' influence. _That's right, Snake. Your bitch-in-heat routine isn't going to work with me._

The drakensis scowled, having heard the subvocalization of that thought, but schooled her face back to calm as the other older Draka touched her briefly on the arm. That one was male, holding a cane that looked to cost as much as an economy-class aircar. His hazel eyes met Hiero's brown ones as he inclined his head in a gesture of lordly acknowledgment, his mouth twisted into a knowing smile.

He turned away from the Draka, feeling his skin crawl as he made his way to his seat. _Don't underestimate that old one,_ he told himself. He obviously knew what he was doing, probably one of their old hands from their Foreign Affairs Directorate. Not many professional diplomats had been among the Alliance's refugee fleet, having been limited to those politicians that had happened to be in the Belt for one reason or another.

The asari, Benezia, frowned as she took in the byplay between the two parties, then returned to her seat commanding a view along both sides of the table. "I thank you all for assembling for this summit," she began, and the noise of conversation died down as attention focused on her. "We are here today to discuss the formal incorporation of the Domination of the Draka and the humans of Samothrace into Citadel Council space, as well as to resolve any outstanding issues and hostilities between both parties."

* * *

_Oh, is that all?_ Dietrich Pope thought wryly. _She certainly don't lack fo' confidence._ He still wasn't sure whether is was hubris or naivete that possessed most of these aliens, especially the asari. He eyed the mediator idly. _Pretty thing, despite those head tentacles._ Benezia was also one of the few asari he had seen that possessed what looked like actual eyebrows instead of the more usual random facial markings. _Might make an entertainin' mount, under othah circumstances. They certainly _look_ like they got the right parts._

He focused his attention back on the mediator as she continued speaking. "Ambassador Dortne Rom of the volus is confident that the economies of both races can be brought into the galactic credit network with little trouble."

"Indeed so, Lady Benezia." A pause as Dortne Rom took a breath through his rebreather. "The Samothracian dollar" Breath. "And the Draka auric" Breath. "Are relatively simple to incorporate in their own ways." Breath. "The Earth-clans maintain a national treasury" Breath. "That can easily be linked into the credit network." Breath. "While the Samothrace-clans have recently discovered" Breath. "Extensive platinum deposits" Breath. "On their homeworld that will aid in their incorporation" Breath. "Into the galactic economy."

Inwardly, Pope scowled. _Damnyankees _would_ go and luck out findin' a planet like that._ _They have _the_ most damnable ability to land on they feet._ It was an old story; the Yankees had had two wide oceans to protect them and natives that died if you sneezed on them, while the Draka faced the more numerous and hardy Bantu tribes and malaria-inducing jungles in their expansion. _'Course, I s'pose it was that cauldron of fire that forged the Race into what it is today._

Benezia nodded to the volus ambassador. "Thank you." She turned her attention down to the perscomp sitting on the table in front of her and tapped a few keys. "Perhaps we can move on to any outstanding issues either party would like to bring forward?"

"Yes." That was the female Samothracian. "I have read over the Citadel Conventions, and I have noted that it forbids the creation of intelligent synthetic life in _any_ form. I respectfully submit that the Domination's drakensis and ghouloons are two such violations of that convention."

A few murmurs from among the alien envoys as their attention shifted over to the Draka party. Helene Renston was practically radiating fury despite her outward calm, and the ghouloons growled low in their throats. Pope spread his hands and looked over to Benezia. "Yo' people have genetic engineerin', isn't that so? Sho'ly yo' can see that the _Homo drakensis_ have a human base with extensive modification. My colleague and her race weren't wholly created, and so aren't 'synthetic' as my Samothracian colleague asserts."

"A subtle distinction," the salarian envoy remarked.

Benezia inclined her head. "But a distinction nonetheless. The drakensis do have a natural template from which they were engineered." She tapped a few more keys on her perscomp. "That does, however, leave your ghouloons. From the information we have been provided, you started with the template of a creature known as the _Theropithecus gelada_, or gelada baboon, and then added elements of other species, such as the leopard, gorilla, the canine _jag hond_... and human genes."

Louder murmuring from among the alien envoys. The hanar envoy spoke up, its bioluminescence flashing in time with its words. "This one humbly submits that the Enkindlers gave the hanar the gift of consciousness."

A sigh from the turian envoy, who leaned an elbow on the table in front of him and shook his head. Benezia shot him a quelling look, then turned her attention back to the hanar. "The Protheans, had they done so, would have utilized the basic template of the hanar and did not introduce elements of foreign genetic templates to do so." She turned back to the Draka. "As it is, the ghouloons _do_ represent intelligent synthetic life as outlined in the Citadel Conventions. However," she continued, putting up a hand to forestall any protest, "we cannot in good conscience call for the genocide of an intelligent species created before the Draka even made contact with the greater galactic community.

"Therefore," she went on, "the ghouloons from this point onward shall have to self-perpetuate with no more being artificially grown." She met the eyes of Pope and Helene as she spoke. "That also goes for the drakensis. Genetic modification of existing templates is allowable, but introducing foreign genetic templates into any of the Domination's intelligent races, or the creation of completely new ones, would be strictly forbidden."

Pope pursed his lips as he considered. _Well, Virunga Biocontrol is goin' to scream they heads off about that._ They already had theoretical upgrades for the drakensis in the pipeline, to introduce feline genes for night vision and increased physical prowess. _Guess that's out of the picture,_ he thought ruefully. Normally he wouldn't have backed down, but the Archon had made it plain that he wanted to make the Domination's incorporation into Citadel space work. That called for him to do one of the hardest things a Draka ever had to do: Retreat.

He gave a slight nod to Helene, who spoke up. "Very well, we agree provisionally pendin' consultation with our superiors in Archona." The Samothracians looked surprised; Benezia smiled warmly in response. "However," the drakensis continued, "we, in turn, feel we should bring up humanity's research into artificial intelligences. They were already installin' them in autonomous cargo freighters and probes even befo' they left the Sol System."

The two humans frowned slightly. The salarian envoy tapped some keys on his own perscomp to bring up the relevant information. "Yes, we've received information on these A.I.s. It would be more correct to say that they are what we would term 'virtual intelligences'. A sophisticated program—or 'compinset' as you would say—that is utilized to assist a user and process data, but not actually self-aware."

"The Draka still bring up a fair point," Benezia said. "Artificial intelligence also counts as intelligent synthetic life as outlined under the Citadel Conventions. Its dangers were clearly illustrated when the quarians were nearly eradicated at the hands of the geth, the artificial workers they created, over a century ago. They now reside in their Migrant Fleet with no planet to call their own." She met the eyes of the Samothracians in turn. "Research into virtual intelligence is allowable, but the creation of true artificial intelligence is strictly forbidden."

A tight nod from the male Samothracian, Miguel Hiero. "We understand, Lady Benezia."

"If ah could bring up anothah point," Helene interjected, "there is also the outstandin' issue of the convoy of Prothean artifacts that the Yank- that the humans stole from a Domination convoy sho'tly after the Prothean research outpost was discovered on Mars, the fo'th planet of the Sol System."

Miguel nodded as she finished speaking, as if he had been expecting the subject. "Yes, we deeply regret that incident and will gladly return all of those Prothean artifacts still in our possession."

Pope looked up sharply as Helene opened her mouth to reply, then closed it with a click of her teeth. "Ah... ah'm sorry?" she managed.

Miguel nodded, smiling as he replied. "We need only to set a location and time. You must understand, however," he continued, "that many of the artifacts were destroyed or lost during the Final War. We will make all efforts to return those that we managed to retain during our... departure from the Sol System."

Pope gritted his teeth behind a neutral expression. _Oh, you greasy damnyankee sumbitch,_ he thought, half with fury and half respectfully. _You get the benefit of bein' the cooperative ones without returnin' most of what you got._ He was morally certain that the Yankees still held most, if not all, of the artifacts they had highjacked from the convoy. But they could claim any number of them had been destroyed or lost in the chaos of the Final War, and who would be able to prove them wrong?

"In return, we would like to bring up the matter of those humans of the former Alliance for Democracy still within the Sol System," Hiero said.

Helene jerked as if she had been stuck with a pin. "They _ours_ now, Yank," she said flatly, glaring across the table. "We won the war." She subsided as Pope touched her arm briefly.

Benezia frowned as she considered. "I understand that this is a... sensitive issue for both sides," she said. "However, the fact remains that your Domination has clearly stated that this 'Final Society' you are creating has no place for unmodified humans, while the Samothracians' numbers are extremely low. That does, in a way, make humanity an endangered species. Perhaps there is room for compromise?"

"I object!" The batarian envoy leaned forward in his chair, scowling slightly. "These humans have killed a good many of our people, and they're actively seeking to control a good part of the Attican Traverse, a region of interest to the Batarian Hegemony."

"But those of your people that the humans have killed have been disavowed by your government," the turian envoy pointed out. "They were pirates and slavers who were using the Traverse as a base to raid Citadel space. We should know; the turian fleet has had to deal with them for centuries now."

Miguel spread his hands. "If I may, the representative for the Turian Hierarchy has a point. Your government cannot suddenly reclaim them just because it is suddenly in its self-interest. Besides, we have encountered practically no official activity from the Hegemony within the Traverse. That hardly makes it a region reserved for the batarians."

"Any outstanding issues between humanity and the Batarian Hegemony are not among the issues to be discussed here today," Benezia reminded them. "This summit is about resolving the differences between the Domination of the Draka and the humans of Samothrace."

* * *

Miguel sat back in his chair and nodded, joining in the general agreement to the asari mediator's words. _At least we know where the batarians stand now,_ he thought sourly, glaring at the batarian envoy from the corner of his eye. _Those bastards would rather see us wiped out._

The older human Draka, Pope, tapped the head of his cane against the table a few times. "If I may," he began, "I believe I can address the issue at hand. As my superior Miz Renston pointed out, those humans still within the Sol System have legally come under the sovereignty of the Domination since the conclusion of the War. Many have been legally purchased by Citizens of the State since then, and our government could not in good conscience deprive our people of their private property.

"I believe we might be able to come to some so't of understandin', however," he continued, "regardin' those humans still under the authority of the Central Detention section of our Security Directorate. They remain undah the authority of the State, and their status could possibly be discussed as part of some larger deal." He leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands together on top of the table. "Then there are the fallback forces that were left behind in former Alliance territory, who continue to harass the men and women who are tryin' to rebuild after the devastation left in the aftermath of the War. Their release could also, perhaps, be discussed."

Miguel stopped himself from grinning. _Ah, have they been giving you a hard time, Snake? How unfortunate._ He hummed under his breath to prevent the drakensis from hearing him subvocalize. "We would like to open discussions regarding _every_ human from the former Alliance, _Senor_ Pope. I'm afraid that those forces are no longer within our command structure, though." He shrugged his shoulders. "How could they be, when we are no longer even in the same solar system? We have no reliable way to communicate with them."

The two Draka glowered at him, to which he responded with a bland smile. Benezia sighed inaudibly where she sat. "Perhaps we should take this opportunity for a recess," she announced. "Some of these matters can be referred to the Council, and maybe the envoys for both parties can communicate with their superiors back on their homeworlds."

"Congenial agreement: an excellent suggestion," the elcor envoy put in in his species' trademark monotone. Affirmatives flowed down the table, and the envoys began to chat with one another as they began to rise from their seats.

"That went well enough," Margaret Myrice commented as they stepped outside the room into the corridor.

Miguel nodded. "The Snakes held their own, but they never were good at diplomacy." The Drakas' brutal honesty was one of the reasons they had become so widely hated back on Earth, and the Protracted Struggle had done nothing to teach much about duplicity.

Margaret opened her mouth to respond, then closed it as the turian envoy approached them. "Mr. Hiero? Mrs. Myrice?" He bowed his head slightly. "Nilik Scavris, of the Turian Hierarchy. I was hoping we could set aside some time to meet with each other."

Margaret looked at Miguel and raised an eyebrow, out of sight of the turian diplomat. Miguel himself was taken aback as well. _Wait. They're fought that small war with the Snakes not that long ago._ A smile stretched across his face. "Thank you. I believe that can be arranged."

* * *

Pope stared moodily out of a window at the Presidium down below, his hands resting on his cane; the two ghouloons had moved forward to interpose themselves between he and Helene and the rest of the alien diplomats to give them some privacy.

_Damnyankees._ "Their expulsion hasn't dimmed that cunnin' of theirs by any great degree," he remarked, keeping his voice low enough so that only Helene's drakensis ears could hear him.

Helene's expression was full of storm clouds. "How could you say we'd even considah the possibility of lettin' any serfs go to join them?" she demanded.

Pope let a deep breath sigh out through his nostrils. "Fo' all that you goin' to be livin' around two hundred fifty years, you don' seem to take the long view, Miz Renston." He turned his head and speared her with a cold gaze. "We already know that many of them former Alliance serfs in Central Detention are no good as workers, not even in the labor camps. They too drunk on they _ideals_, grew up gettin' they heads filled with them. 'Specially the North Americans." He shook his head. "We could just expend 'em all, but possibly kickin' 'em out to join the other ferals in Samothrace could help _us_ to look good to the Council. And gettin' rid of they fallback forces helps to secure the New Territories on Earth." He shook his head. "It's a brand new game we playin', Miz Renston. You better start learnin' the moves."

Helene blinked, then nodded slowly. "Ah... yes, ah see what yo' mean. Ah'll... try, sir."

Pope nodded once, a sharp gesture of approval. A growl from the ghouloons made him raise an eyebrow and turn around. Standing beyond the two hulking dark-furred transgenes was the batarian envoy. "Excuse me. I was hoping to have a word with you," the alien said, tilting his head to the left in an unfamiliar gesture. "I was thinking we could discuss issues of... mutual interest."

The elder Draka smiled, and inclined his head in return. "I think I'd like that." He craned his head back to look up at the two ghouloons. "It's alright, boys. Let the good envoy through. We have a lot to discuss, I think."


	17. Chapter 17

**ARCHONA**

**EARTH, SOL SYSTEM**

**LOCAL CLUSTER**

**NOVEMBER 4, 2003**

Louise Gayner stood at the window of her rented house in the eastern suburbs of Archona, watching the beating of rain against the glass. She wore an outfit of almost ostentatious plainness in dark red lined, no more than a single stickpin in her cravat. A statement in a way: so was the gun. Not an ornamental dress weapon. A Virkin custom job, worn higher-slung than usual and canted forward in a cutaway holster, the molded grip polished with use. A duelist's weapon, though the days of her settling affairs with other Citizens with the ultimate argument in Draka politics were behind her. There were six tiny gold stars set into the crackle-finished black metal of the slide.

_And now I'll never git that seventh,_ she thought, partly with regret and partly with a smug satisfaction that twisted her mouth into a smirk. Eric von Shrakenberg, hero of the Eurasian War, Archon who won the Sol War – as many were starting to call the now inappropriately named 'Final War' - and the Turian War, He Who conquered the Solar System, who the ignorant majority of Citizens were showering with praises, had finally died after holding the tiller of the Domination for so long. That twisted the smirk into a cold sneer. _Bastard always knew how to make hisself look good._

Gayner was only back in the capital because of the sitting Archon's death, pulled away from her command of the pacification campaign in Australasia. The corner of her mouth turned up as she snapped a thumbnail against the grip of her gun. It had seen use even there, despite her being only a decade younger than the recently departed von Shrakenberg. _Never saw much fightin' up close mahself befo'. Maybe I _should_ a' gone into War 'stead a' Security._

She turned away from the window, still spry despite being in her seventies, and flicked her wrists forward to settle the lace. Sitting patiently in one of the wingback chairs was someone even older than her, resting his hands on the ivory dragon's head of his cane. He was watching her evenly, his wrinkled face neutral and contrasting with his bald pate gleaming with the light from the flames in the marble fireplace.

"Jus' savorin' the moment, Dietrich," she apologized. "Always wanted t' see him put in a grave. Been a long time comin' – too long if y'ask me." She adjusted her gunbelt and sank into the chair opposite him.

Dietrich Pope raised one eyebrow over a face that remained otherwise expressionless. "Sho'ly he deserves _some_ respect for the long service he provided to the State," he remarked.

Gayner waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, sure. I heard the speeches at the funeral, and made up one of my own to 'honor the memory of one of the Domination's greatest sons'." A smirk as she leaned back in the chair and folded her hands in her lap. "But let's just git to the heart of the matter instead."

"Indeed." He leaned his cane against the side of the chair, hooking the head over the arm, and settled himself. "I was bookin' my flight to Baghdad to see home and my grandchildren when yo' invitation came. After spendin' so long on that overstuffed zoo the Council races call a station, I was lookin' fo'ward to some quiet time and open spaces." He had been pulled out of a semi-retirement for the negotiations on the Citadel and to tutor young Miz Renston; he had found the relatively quiet Landholder's life on his plantation near the shores of Lake Habbaniyah in Mesopotamia Province welcome after a life spent in the service of the main Foreign Affairs Directorate offices in Archona. Riding among the vast fields of wheat, barley and rice, the groves of date palms. Taking his yacht out on the lake for a cruise or for fishing. Proudly watching his visiting grandchildren return on horseback from a successful catsticking for marsh lion, lances in hand and lion-dogs trotting at their ankles.

_Admit it, Dietrich,_ he told himself. _You like bein' in the active service again. Being _needed_ again._ It had certainly been interesting, testing his skill against the Yankees in a brand new theatre, one where _they_ intrigued in the shadows of Great Powers. _Powers with over two thousand years of experience bein' the top dogs._ Daunting, but extremely interesting.

"My apologies," Gayner replied, and actually sounded as if she meant it. "But there's so few chances for us Old Domination types to meet nowadays. So much work rebuildin' from the War and gettin' everything ready for the New Race to take over." A wry smirk. "I will admit that they've turned out better'n I thought they would, from when von Shrakenberg and I were arguin' about what structure the Final Society should take." A pause, then, grudgingly, she continued, "Perhaps for the best that we didn't follow the hive-insect specialization model. The New Race'll need t' stay dynamic to keep up with these Council races, as well as the Yankees."

Pope inclined his head in agreement. "'Sides the fact that we might've made 'em think of those rachni things them krogan killed off back durin' they Rachni Wars." A smile. "Ratha ingenious the way them salarians and turians used that genophage to control they birthrate. The krogans', I mean. O' course, that means they also geneticists of note; we don' hold the monopoly on biologicals no mo'."

Gayner nodded unhappily. "Our big trump card." Her eyes narrowed. "And they have the gall to say what we can and can't do with the drakensis, the ghouloons - even the servus!" Her Angolan accent turned harsh. "It's intolerable! And von Shrakenberg just bent over fo' them."

Dietrich nodded meditatively. "I did feel ratha... constrained in my dealin's at the summit. I'm sho' if I'd put my back up on certain issues, we'd've gotten mo' concessions than we did." A slight shrug. "But our late Archon wanted us to seem reasonable to the Council races. He had points heah and theah, but we went through the 19th Century practicin' our institutions without Britain or Europe comin' down on us. These asari and salarians seem just as... sho't-sighted as they were, in some respects, though the turians don't like us _a_-tall." A slow smile. "I get the feelin' it's been too long since they been whupped by the krogan, or anyone else fo' that mattah."

The female Draka's lips peeled back to show her teeth in what was only partly a grin. "That's what happens when you come up against the Race. An' it also proves what I've been thinkin'." At the questioning look Pope gave her: "We Draka may have conquered the solar system, but it ain't the end all be all of everythin'. We've built the Final Society _here_, but there's a whole galaxy out _there_, filled with aliens who're against slavery just as much as the Yankees, an' think they can tell us what to do just like Britain an' Europe thought they could befo' the Great War."

"There are the batarians," Pope pointed out.

"True," she admitted. "They not so bad, got the proper attitude 'bout a lotta things. But they people was gettin' whupped by the _Yankees_, and they government doesn't have the same military power as the Council races. They mo' like _merchants_ than propah warriors. They pay _others_ to do the raidin' and slavin', instead a' just goin' out an' conquerin' themselves." She shook her head. "Impatient too. Try an' install control devices in they slaves instead of takin' the time to break 'em to the yoke personal like."

"Mmm, yo' have a point." The older Draka pursed his lips and leaned his elbows on the arms of the chair, pressing the fingertips of each hand against each other. "They ambassador was civil enough, but Freya preserve anyone who says they can't have what they want. They diplomacy reminds me of a spoiled brat sometimes. Still, they'll prove useful allies fo' a time; they got knowledge about the galaxy that we need, an' technology that could prove useful. An' we got military power an' knowledge of the Yankees that they want."

Gayner nodded. "They think they goin' t' ride us to glory." A harsh chuckle. "Lots of people thought that befo' we slapped tattoos on they necks. But I digress." She leaned forward. "Fact o' the matter is that we seein' the destiny of the Race unfoldin' befo' our eyes. We conquered the Earth an' the solar system because any social system different to ours is a deadly threat. Sure, we've bought time fo' ourselves by kickin' the Yankees out. But who discovered the Prothean outpost? _We did_. What happened as soon as we set foot out in the galaxy? The turians attacked us. What do these Council races do as soon as we decide to show up at they summit? Restrict us from doin' what we will with our own people an' with our _serfs!_" Her eyes held his. "The galaxy is out theah, waitin' fo' _us_."

Pope hesitated, then replied. "Yo' realize the Citadel Fleet outweighs us. _Substantially_. Council space ain't goin' to be an easy nut to crack." Reluctantly: "Fact o' the mattah is, if the Council hadn't stepped into the Turian War, the fleet the Hierarchy was mobilizin' woulda squashed us _flat_. Sho, we coulda made 'em bleed planetside when they tried to occupy us, but we'd've ended up no bettah than the Yankee holdouts in the New Territories."

"I'm not sayin' we fly out through the relay network guns blazin' tomorrow, or even the next day." A smile twisted her mouth, slightly mocking. "They own fault they stopped the turians when they did. In the fullness of time we'll make 'em regret it. The asari may live fo' a thousand years – and wouldn't Virunga Biocontrol love to figure _that_ one out! – but we Draka are a patient people. We'll build up our numbers, absorb they technology, build our power within the Citadel."

"Not at that system they granted us in the Serpent Nebula," Pope warned. "Only access to that cluster is through the relays around the Citadel, an' any buildup would be sho' to make 'em suspicious."

"O' course." Gayner waved that off. "I meant workin' within they power structure, gettin' the Domination mo' influence that way. I'm given to understand we have other plans fo' that system."

A nod. "That new system – I've heard we're callin' it Niddhog – we goin' to hand ovah to the Combines, make it a manufacturin' center. Persuade some of our Citizen artisans to settle there as well. Make Niddhog 2 a manufacturin' center fo' the Citadel an' the galaxy beyond. Get them used to Draka goods." Pope smiled. "I have to admit, those asari have some damn fine artisans themselves. But we make things they don't."

Gayner grinned. "That's right, we'll make 'em think we bein' nice little Draka. But meanwhile we start thinkin' long term, meanuverin', positionin' ourselves for when the time is right. With von Shrakenberg gone, the Archon the Conservatives'll replace him with won't nearly have the clout to block us as much as he did." A pause. "Speakin' of which, how's our recruitment been goin'?"

"Very well, actually." A thin smile. "Lot of the drakensis are unhappy with how high-handed the Council's been treatin' us, an' with how the Conservatives just let 'em." A raspy chuckle. "I'm sho' Miz Renston would be a fine candidate herself, but she's in a position where she don't need to know. 'Sides, she needs a bit mo' discipline, bit mo' experience undah her belt. Bein' on the Citadel should help wit' that."

"Very good." Gayner pressed a button on the intercom. A few minutes later a serf entered with two crystal wine glasses and a bottle. She raised a glass of red. "Glory to the Race!" she toasted.

"Glory to the Race!"

* * *

**JEFFERSON**

**SAMOTHRACE, INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**EXODUS CLUSTER**

**FEBRUARY 2, 2004**

Janet Lefarge strode quickly along Ontario Avenue, shoulders squared underneath her Naval Forces jacket. She was far from the only one in casual uniform on the streets of the capital with the Sixth Fleet back in-system from convoy duty from Caleston escorting a shipment of element zero back from the moon on the other side of the Attican Traverse, near the frontier with the Terminus Systems. It had been a tenser cruise than usual with everyone half-expecting a batarian attack.

"Four-eyed bastards", she muttered under her breath. The Hegemony wasn't happy that the unofficial settlements there had been seized by Samothrace during the course of their reprisals against the pirate bands. They threatened to bomb humanity back into the Stone Age every time they moved a shipment of eezo out of the gas giant moon, and people had started to take them a lot more seriously ever since they started getting friendly with the Domination.

Janet stopped in front of the window to Plaza Santa Cecilia's Cantina and ducked down to check her reflection below the painted wood sign. Pale blue eyes, dusting of freckles across nose and cheeks, black hair still cropped close to her skull at the back and sides of her head but longer at the top to produce bangs that came down near her eyes. She half-smiled as she brushed a few strands back. The hairstyle had started among the female Marines, but had quickly spread to the Fleets and seemed to be catching on among the civvies too.

Satisfied, she straightened and pushed through into Santa Cecilia's. Her ears were immediately assailed with the Ironbelly Bootstomper music roaring from the speakers, and the noise of several hundred young voices. Every table and booth was full, and the bar was packed three deep; smoke drifted under the ceiling, about half tobacco. About three quarters of the patrons were in uniform, both Naval Forces and Marines, while the rest were in civvies. A good many of the latter had the gaunt look of the first wave of former Alliance serfs released from the Domination under the watchful eye of the turian Lifebearer Brigade and the hanar aid organization Healing Waters. The scarring on their necks below their left ears confirmed it, where the Snakes' serial numbers had been removed with lasers and chemical washes.

Janet began to push through the crowd in a forward-tackle drive towards the beer taps, earning hard glares from some while others took undue liberties in the tight press. Those she answered with elbows just under the ribs and feet trodden on by her heavy military boots. One Marine with an East Asian cast to his features scowled and started to take exception to her rebuttal, but his buddies quickly grabbed him by the shoulders. "Be honest, you had that coming," one of them bawled into his ear over the music.

_You're one lucky bastard,_ she thought. If his friends hadn't stopped him, she was prepared to make him _really_ sorry. _Dumb gyrenes think they're tougher than Naval Forcers._ She'd scored top of her class in Unarmed Combat training back in Space Force Basic and had kept it up in the years since.

With a final shoulder first shove, she slid between two people at the bar and leaned an elbow onto it. She reached a hand out and tugged the bartender's sleeve as he hurried by to get his attention. "_Uno cerveza, por favor_," she shouted over the music. The bartender, with a swarthy complexion that spoke of Latin blood, smiled at the Spanish and turned to get a mug.

_"Janet! Awer 'ere!"_

Janet's head came up, blinking in surprise. _There's only one person I know with that accent..._ "Excuse me!" she bellowed at her two nearest neighbors, putting her hands on their shoulders and levering her feet to knee-height off the ground. She caught sight of the old man sitting in one of the booths, waving. A bright grin and she nodded acknowledgment as she lowered herself back down, turned back to the bar and grabbed her beer before plunging back into the crowd worked her way steadily towards the booth.

She slid into the seat with Southwestern-patterned synthetic fabric upholstery across the table from Johnathan Winters, one of her father's old friends. A stocky figure in a blue suit with pale yellow tie. His face was Northern England, with blue eyes and dark brown hair receding from a high forehead.

"Janet, good to see ya, lass," Winters said, reaching a hand across the table to slap her on the upper arm with a smile.

"You too, Uncle John," she replied with a smile as she set her mug to the side. "Wouldn't expect to see you in a place like this. I'm meeting Iris and her new boyfriend here." Her twin sister had really gotten into writing as of late, after relatively brief forays into music, painting, and sculpting. _She was always the artsy one,_ she thought, _while I've been good with numbers and knocking heads._ _Oh well, to each their own._ She felt a brief stab of melancholy at the thought of her sister having a boyfriend; a career in the military didn't lend itself to a healthy social life.

She brought herself back to the real world when Winters began to reply. "I actually came here to see yuh," he said, his face becoming unwontedly serious.

"Me?" Janet's brow furrowed in confusion.

Winters nodded. "Whey aye. Been hearin' in certain places that ye've been lookin' into the Institute."

Janet's expression froze, and she remained very still as she looked at her family's friend with new eyes. Samothrace had several institutes, but only one was known as _the_ Institute. The SSI. The Strategic Studies Institute.

She glanced around the cantina quickly: there were a few very quiet, systematically inconspicuous people spread around the inside.

"Janet." She brought her attention back to the older man sitting across from her, and saw a slight smile on his lips. "Ye've been doin' good work out there in the Traverse. Up to Lieutenant now, eh?" He took a sip from the glass of water sitting in front of him. "The Institute's been watchin' ye fer a while now, lass." The smile took on an edge of sadness at her surprise. "I was in the Cumberland Borderers as an NCO when the OSS contacted me, and recruited me into their special forces." His gaze went distant as he looked back across the years. "I was with yer da in India in '76. That's how we know each other." His gaze sharpened back onto her. "And ye've been expressin' an interest yerself, eh?"

The younger woman nodded numbly. She had always fought the batarians with her utmost, but she had always wanted to fight the _real_ enemy. The Snakes. She had missed out on the fighting back during the Fall – probably for the best, all things considered – and now they were both technically allies under the Citadel Council. _Very technically,_ she thought. She had only vague memories of the attack on the transport _Pathfinder_ in '82, part of what the psych people said was deliberate repression of traumatic memories. She remembered her mom being sick for a long time afterward though, and breaking into fits of unexplained panic or crying for a few years afterward.

Her fingers curled up into a fist on the seat beside her leg, but she kept her features schooled to calm. "So what is this exactly, Uncle John?" she asked evenly.

Winters smiled as he folded his hands on the tabletop. "Aboot what ye'd expect. Do ye still want the Institute?"

A stab of excitement felt in her chest. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"I want ye to be sure aboot this, lass," he warned. "The Institute isn't like the spy flicks. Ye're da was in the OSS, so ye should have a better idea than yer average new recruit."

_That's true,_ she admitted to herself. She had grown up in the old New America Project on Habitat Seven in the Belt after all. Her father had been fortunate enough to get on a Black Fund project, and so she had gotten to see him regularly. But it had been mostly paperwork, meetings, wrangling scientists to keep them from departmental infighting. She had always been a creature of action, herself.

But the Institute went up against the Bad Guys at levels far more important than the Naval Forces. They and the Marines fought in skirmishes, and incidents, and wars. The SSI, if it did its job right, short-circuited them altogether, and hurt the enemy in ways even more significant. In the end, she had made up her mind when she was a kid and been waiting for this opportunity all her life. She nodded.

Winters smiled and extended a hand across the table. "Then I'll be seein' ye later, Janet." She shook his hand, then quickly palmed the small piece of paper and unobtrusively looked at it, memorized the address and the letter-number combinations there. Her face turned, and her hand seemed to brush casually against her mouth; her throat worked silently.

The SSI man nodded fractionally, then slid out of the booth and headed for the door. Janet watched him go, then slid her beer back in front of her and stared down into the amber liquid. The choice had been made; she would just have to see where it went from here.

She brought her eyes back up and looked around the cantina again. _Still have Iris and her new boyfriend to meet._


	18. Chapter 18

**PNYX GOVERNMENT DISTRICT**

**JEFFERSON**

**SAMOTHRACE, INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**EXODUS CLUSTER**

**MAY 3, 2004**

Jefferson's new administrative district – named for the hill that was ancient Athens' official meeting place for their democratic assembly – was nearly completed. It was a relatively compact area of unassuming buildings compared to the old United States' Federal Capital District, but beneath the buildings were a series of hardened bunkers that extended far down into Samothrace's crust. When complete, they were designed to be able to withstand orbital bombardment by a dreadnought's main gun, as well as direct hits from high-energy release weapons such as nuclear or antimatter bombs, while keeping the Samothracian government operational. Security procedures for access involved both authorization and physical screening, with the latest technology to detect impostors, as well as biological and technological contagions.

Frederick Lefarge sat at a table in a room three stories underground that was almost severely plain, with institutional white walls and dark green synthetic fiber carpeting. The table was plain metal with the individuals attending the meeting seated in basic office chairs. _Not very homey,_ he thought sardonically. Finishing touches were still a ways away, while expansion of the settlements and infrastructure had been aided greatly by the recent access to the galactic markets of Council Space.

_The flipside is that the Snakes are recovering faster than I'd like._ The Domination had had a lot more ready resources to offer to the intergalactic economy, and so a good amount of purchasing power in rebuilding the Sol System. _Which means they'll be building up their Fleet a lot sooner than we thought. The one advantage of the original New America Project is that we would have had a gulf of interstellar space shielding us, giving us time to build. But with the mass relays..._ The Citadel was humanity's greatest chance of providing a shield against a Draka attack that, as things stood, they couldn't survive.

_Which is why we're here._ Lefarge looked around the table at the others as they set notes down in front of themselves and settled in their seats. Aides sat unobtrusively in chairs against the far walls, briefcases at hand to be ready to access any information their principals might need.

"I don't see why we're here," Patricia Hayato said, fiddling with a folder. "Shouldn't any major policy decisions wait for the formation of a civilian government?" Hayato, the former lifesystems specialist on the New America Project, had taken on an unofficial role as leader of the opposition, representing those of the 'cultural mosaic' line of colonization that represented a large minority of the outlying settlements on Samothrace, California and the smaller settlements on other worlds in the Attican Traverse. The dense settlement that was expanding outwards from Jefferson and New Jerusalem, the initial settlements on Samothrace and California respectively, largely followed the 'melting pot' line but possessed small minorities who supported Hayato's line as well.

Some of the more extreme 'melting pot' supporters believed Hayato and her people were of the same sort of thinking that caused India to secede from the Alliance for Democracy in the mid '70s, which had gotten the subcontinent conquered by the opportunistic Draka and caused the whole Alliance to take a major morale hit. Their Hindi Raj Party had hoped to remain neutral between the Domination and the Alliance, preserving their own culture behind tariff barriers while industrializing with unacknowledged help from the Alliance.

Hayato and her people lashed back by calling them cultural imperialists on par with the Draka, looking to replace every human culture with that of 'General North American' that had dominated the old United States. American English, and the culture that had gone with it, had been expanding and wearing away at the cultural boundaries between the Alliance member states by the end of the 20th Century through market forces. With the Fall and the overwhelming sense of loss that had come with it, they wished to resurrect the old cultures that had been in danger of extinction and felt that they had numbers sufficient to do so, as opposed to the 100,000 that would have made a sublight journey to Alpha Centauri. The waves of refugees being expelled from the Sol System, they said, only strengthened their argument, giving humanity the numbers to allow the disparate cultures to be preserved and thus enrich the species as a whole.

Hayato had been one of the ones who had pushed hardest for the establishment of a constitution to bring the issue to the people as a whole, instead of closed door arguments among the officials of the military-dominated emergency administration. Lefarge, who felt like he had aged a decade in the past four years, had been only too happy to comply. _The United Systems of Samothrace,_ he mused. _Does have a certain ring to it._ The name of their new homeworld had grown on a majority of the people, though some wondered why they hadn't simply named their government for their species as the Council races seemed prone to do. Frederick had blocked that measure personally.

"Some things have to be taken care of now," Lefarge replied to Hayato. "The elections are still several months away, and some things... have to be done for the sake of our new country, even if they may be unpopular."

That produced some murmuring around the table. "What do you mean by that, Fred?" That was Colin McKenzie, the heavy-construction man from the old Project. He was overseeing the dismantling of the old modular buildings and the construction of new ones out of resources harvested from Samothrace, a sure sign that they were really starting to put down roots here.

Lefarge set his hands on the table. "It should come as no surprise that we have SSI people overseeing the transfer of the refugees from Earth when the Snakes turn them over to the turian and hanar aid organizations." Nods around the table. The last thing they wanted was for the Draka to slip them another version of their Stone Dogs through them.

"What they have learned is that the hanar discovered a pre-mass effect technology world some years ago," he continued. "A planet called Rakhana. Post-industrial technology, but arid and scarce resources. The species there has reached an overpopulation crisis – around eleven billion people." Shocked exclamations from some; Earth had never reached more than two billion before the Fall. "The hanar have been evacuating as many of them as they can – they call themselves drell – but they estimate they won't be able to move more than a few hundred thousand to their homeworld, Kahje, before a fatal collapse of their society."

A stretch of silence as everyone around the table considered the implications of those words. Break down of social order, global war over remaining resources devolving into desperate bands clawing at each other for crumbs of food. Some of the faces had gone pale, while others with even more imagination swallowed thickly.

"That's... horrible," Anson MacDonald said. "But we have limited resources ourselves, and few enough colonization prospects out there that we could settle them on."

Lefarge shook his head. "I don't plan on settling them on some world we've discovered. I plan on bringing them here, to Samothrace."

Another silence fell, this one shocked. Then it broke as everyone began talking at once. "You can't be serious," McKenzie exclaimed, breaking through the noise. "You want to bring _aliens_ here?"

The Quebec-Scots man fell silent as Lefarge turned a cold look on him. "That's it exactly," he replied. "And all of your reactions are one reason why we _should_ do this." His frown deepened at their confusion. "Ever since we encountered the batarians for the first time I've seen a disturbing trend. How many slurs have we come up with for the batarians? 'Four-eyes'? 'Pencil necks'?

"But it goes beyond that," he continued. "It's spread beyond the batarians. Ever since those pirate bands attacked us, we've grown this feeling that the galaxy is out to get us. All of you know what I'm talking about." They did; there was a palpable sense of a 'siege mentality' among the people, especially since the refugees – and former serfs – had started to be released, living examples of what could happen to them, the worst case scenario. Surrounded by pirate and slaver bands in the Traverse and further out in the Terminus Systems; by the Batarian Hegemony active in the Skyllian Verge, thumping their chests and snarling every time Samothrace solidified their presence in the Traverse a little more; and by the Snakes, the age old enemy that they knew only too well.

"There have been incidents against members of the Council races that have visited our territory too. Turians, salarians, asari, volus. We're like an animal that's been mistreated and hit too often, and we're snapping at anyone who gets too close to us." Lefarge shook his head. "We have to stop it now, before it sets in. The drell haven't done anything to us, and they're in trouble." A smile. "They're the huddled masses that the old Alliance stood for, and welcomed into their lands for a better life.

"And it isn't as if they were _very_ alien." Photographs were passed around the table. "The drell are a reptile-like species, but bipedal and look remarkably similar to us in some respects. They're native to an arid world, and Samothrace has that band of desert around the equator that we've done barely anything with. We also have those modular buildings we've been disassembling here, that can be easily reassembled down there. Then there's the fact that, even with all the refugees we've been taking in, we're still not that numerous. We need more people." A raised eyebrow. "Even if they're not 'people' in the typical sense of the word."

The room fell silent as everyone absorbed the general's words. They could see the arguments in favor of the proposal, but they still had misgivings that they couldn't quite put into words. Eventually attention focused on Hayato who was Lefarge's most vocal opponent in so many matters.

She met their regard, then looked across the table at Frederick. "My people have believed that the _kami_, or spirits of nature, exist in everything from deities to animals and natural objects, like suns, mountains, trees and rivers." An ironic smile. "Not too dissimilar from what I've been hearing of the asari philosophies, actually." A sigh. "You're right, General. We've been so caught up with our own arguments that we've barely noticed the rot that's been setting in, the same sort that caused the rise of the Militarist caste in Japan. The drell need our help and, in a way, we need their help. What are you planning?"

An inaudible sigh as everyone realized – subliminally at least – that they were going ahead with the proposal. Frederick nodded across the table to Hayato in thanks, returned by a slight rise of an eyebrow. _Remember this,_ it said. _I will, Patricia,_ he thought. _I will._

"We've still got the _New America_ in orbit," he replied. "It's long been planned to convert her into a dedicated warship, but we've been so caught up in expanding the Naval Forces with cruisers and frigates that it hasn't progressed very far. I plan on sending it, along with a few other ships, to Rakhana to evacuate as many drell as we can."

"You want to send the _New America_?" MacDonald looked quite humanly shocked for a moment, his expression slack with surprise, as opposed to his usual gruff self-control. "She's our heavy-hitter. What if the Snakes decide to attack while she's gone?"

"I've arranged for a... deterrent you might say. We all know the Snakes got into a small shooting war with the turians last year. The Hierarchy has been extremely interested in forging close relations with us, and have agreed to send some ships to escort the _New America_ to Rakhana, as well as some 'peacekeeping' patrols by others to the Invictus and Demos systems while it's gone."

MacDonald frowned slightly in thought, then nodded slowly. "I can see how that would give the Snakes pause. I'm just surprised the turians would be willing to risk a war over a few human colonies."

"They _really_ don't like the Snakes," Lefarge replied. "Something I believe we can relate to." A general chuckle around the table. "They offered to extend us protectorate status about on par with what they've done with the volus, which would make us a client state of the Turian Hierarchy. I respectfully declined, of course. They _are_ willing to sell us weapons while we get our own manufacturies up and running. They'll also send patrols through our territory in the Traverse to deter any attacks from the Domination and the Hegemony, and we're going to allow California to be a port of call for their ships. But we _will_ remain a sovereign state."

"That's... better than I would have hoped," McKenzie replied slowly, sounding surprised.

Lefarge smiled. "Their envoy told me that they can see the potential in our species, and felt that we would have won during the Fall if the Domination hadn't resorted to a weapon that would have been forbidden under the Citadel Conventions had we been in contact with the greater galaxy. We both have a lot in common, as well. They have a strong tradition of civic duty as we do, and strict discipline and work ethic." He spread his hands. "Not as entrepreneurial as we are, and their _entire_ culture seems to revolve around their military instead of being mobilized by necessity as we do, but we still have more common ground with them than they do with the Draka."

Silence fell for a time as everyone around the table dealt with a feeling almost unfamiliar, one they hadn't allowed themselves to feel for years: Hope.

"Are we agreed then? Good, then let's move on..."

* * *

**TAYSERI WARD**

**CITADEL**

**WIDOW SYSTEM**

**SERPENT NEBULA**

**JULY 10, 2008**

Though she had resided there for years Helene Renston held no official position on the Citadel. The Domination, as of yet, had no embassy there, though both they and the Samothracians were making strong pushes for them. _Only reason neither side has gotten one yet is prob'ly 'cause the Council don' want to look like they preferrin' one over the othah,_ she thought.

She mainly acted as an unofficial envoy for the Domination of the Draka, helping to negotiate trade treaties on behalf of the Combines with the other races of Council Space and negotiating other outstanding issues on a one-on-one basis. The ambassadors were free to ignore her if they wished though, just as they could ignore Miguel Hiero, the human envoy. As for a meeting with the Council itself... _Might as well wish fo' an apartment on the Presidium,_ she thought sourly.

Just as ambassadors mostly had access to the Council, so did members of the races who possessed embassies have easier access to the Presidium. She had been there only occasionally since that first summit nearly five years ago. She made do with most of a floor in an apartment building in the Wards. The Domination, at the very least, recognized that a Citizen shouldn't have to put up with the cramped spaces most of the Council races seemed content with. _Serfish so't of attitude._

Right then, however, Helene was pursuing her own affairs. She was striding briskly through the Gaeron Botanical Gardens, draped in a classical-style silk gown that left one shoulder bare and wearing gilt-edged sandals that strapped up the calf. She had a gold and ruby fibula that fastened the gown and diamond eardrops, and there was a servus a few paces behind her struggling to keep up.

"Gods damned shuttle," she muttered under her breath. It had coasted right past her stop near the Dilinaga Concert Hall and eventually dropped her off a ways away. Enduring the cramped confines of a shuttle with aliens who didn't leave her enough personal space was intolerable enough without the indignity of having to _walk_ to the Concert Hall for the latest asari opera. The Foreign Affairs Directorate hadn't responded to her requests for a proper aircar yet, and she hardly had enough credits on her own to afford a proper asari version. The Trevithick Combine was trying to get a foothold onto the Citadel market, but their luxury versions were having problems finding buyers, competing against cheaper asari shuttles which had reigned supreme for centuries.

_They prob'ly distracted by the extranet debate like everyone else back to home._ The State and the War Directorate had high priority communications access like all governments and militaries in Council Space. The galactic computer network had proven to be a thorny issue, however, when the Extranet Access Combine was set up to purchase bandwidth and blocks of high priority access to the FTL comm buoy network, to be resold to Citizens who purchased subscriptions for access to the extranet through perscomps. The Security Directorate had immediately stepped in and declared a project to censor and monitor extranet access between Domination space and Council Space at large.

There had been an uproar among a large wing of the Conservatives, as well as the fringe Rationalists who had seen a surprising resurrection after their demise near the end of the Eurasian War and the beginning of the Protracted Struggle. The Militants, sufficed it to say, backed the project, arguing that the serfs could end up gaining access over time. Their opponents argued that Citizens of the State shouldn't be monitored as if they were serfs themselves, but fully backed the censorship aspects of the project. It wouldn't do for some Yankee anti-slavery propaganda to make it onto a perscomp that might be seen by a serf in Apollonaris after all. The more savvy salarian techs familiar with Earth history called the project the 'Great Firewall of Draka', a name that had spread rapidly.

_Bunch o' damn foolishness,_ she thought wearily. The last thing the Race needed was arguments among themselves when it seemed most of the rest of the galaxy seemed determined to keep them down.

"Watch where you're going, Draka."

Helene looked up sharply to see an armored krogan glaring down at a drakensis in a black War Directorate uniform who had bumped into him while admiring a selection of flowers from Thessia. The reptilian species infamous for their Rebellions over a thousand years ago always reminded her of dinosaurs standing on their hind legs. Like all krogan, the top of this one's spine was slightly curved, giving him a hunchbacked appearance. The effect was further enhanced by the heavy frill of bone and scaled flesh growing from his upper back, collar, and shoulders like a thick shell, from which his blunt head protruded. Rough, leathery plates covered the crown of his skull and nape of his neck. His features were flat and brutish, almost prehistoric. He had no visible nose or ears and his eyes were small and set wide on either side of his head, though they gleamed with a cruel cunning.

The young drakensis blinked up at the krogan, then his mouth curled in a sneer. "Maybeso you should watch where _yo'_ goin', T-Rex." His hand drifted near the Jamieson knife sheathed on his leg.

The krogan's eyes narrowed in both confusion and suspicion, and they flicked down towards the blade before going back to the Draka's face. A grim smile tugged the corners of his mouth up. "I like your attitude, boy, but don't be stupid."

Helene took a sharp intake of breath, and her eyes flicked to the drakensis to see his face contorting with rage. 'Boy' was not a word you casually threw in a Citizen's face, a name reserved for use with serfs. His hand clasped firmly around the handle of the knife. "Yo' goin' apologize fo' that right _now_, dinosaur, or ah'm goin' t' make yo' regret it."

The krogan's eyes narrowed further, obviously unsure of what had just deepened the confrontation even further, but equally obviously unwilling to back down and lose face. "Think hard about your next move, Draka, and get your hand away from the blade."

"Or what?" the drakensis jeered, sliding the blade partly out of its sheath. Helene herself kept unobtrusively in the background, her hand ready to reach for the Tolgren pistol strapped to her thigh beneath the gown, while the servus cowered behind her. She noticed peripherally that others had also stopped to watch the confrontation, keeping themselves a good distance away.

Helene blinked, then squinted slightly to sharpen her vision as she noticed a faint aura around the krogan. _What in Freya's name is _that_?_

The krogan suddenly thrust a clenched fist in the drakensis' direction, and the air rippled as an invisible wave of energy surged out and over his adversary. The unsuspecting Draka was picked up off his feet and thrown backward several meters. By the bug-eyed expression on his face, he had no idea what had just happened to him. He landed heavily on the floor with a grunt.

_He's a biotic!_ Helene had heard of individuals capable of manipulating dark energy, the imperceptible quantum force that pervaded all the so-called empty space of the universe, but had never seen the talent in action before. Normally too weak to have any noticeable effects on the physical world, dark energy could be concentrated into extremely dense fields by biotics through mental conditioning. With their natural talents augmented by thousands of microscopic amplifiers surgically implanted throughout their nervous system, biotic individuals could use biofeedback to release the accumulated power in a single directed burst.

The drakensis was stunned only for a second—plenty of time for the krogan to cross the distance between them and wrap his three-fingered hand around the drakensis' throat. He raised the Draka into the air, easily holding him with one arm as he slowly began to exert pressure on his windpipe.

The young drakensis clamped his hands onto the krogan's arm, and his lips peeled back to reveal clenched teeth as he brought his knees up to his chest, then punched his heels outward into the alien's armored chest. Startled by the raw strength behind the blow, the krogan was forced to release his hold and stumbled back several steps as the Draka shoulder rolled to his feet and pulled the Jamieson, crouching into a knife-fighting stance.

The krogan let out a rumbling chuckle as he pulled a long, jagged blade from his boot. "Not bad, not bad," he commented. "I think I'm starting to like you, kid." He began to crouch into his own fighting stance when shouts suddenly rang out.

"Citadel Security! Drop your weapons now!"

Helene followed the gaze of the drakensis and the krogan as several turians, two asari and a salarian, all in the blue and black uniform of C-Sec, suddenly hurried over with mostly pistols and a couple of assault rifles drawn.

The krogan sized up the officers, then shrugged his shoulders and dropped the blade. "Just having a bit of fun," he remarked.

The Draka soldier carefully set his knife on the floor in front of him. "Jus' a misunderstandin', officers." He was eyeing the reptilian alien with new respect in his eyes.

So was Helene. _Them biotics are somethin' else!_ she thought. _I wonder if we got people lookin' into 'em._

She glanced at her watch and grimaced as she saw the time. "Ignacy, come on now. Ah'm goin' t' be late fo' the show." She hurried on towards the Concert Hall as the C-Sec officers began their questioning behind her.


	19. Chapter 19

**H3 MINING PLATFORM 38**

**EXCELSIOR PROJECT**

**ORBIT OF NAXOS, INVICTUS SYSTEM**

**EXODUS CLUSTER**

**MARCH 1, 2012**

Platform 38 was a larger than average space station with a dozen docking bays built along its exterior, each capable of accommodating everything from small to medium-sized vessels to large freighters. Most of the arrivals were supply ships bringing in necessary resources from Samothrace to keep the manned platform running, along with freighters that loaded up extracted helium-3 fuel for delivery back to the booming fuel cell industry and fusion reactors of Samothrace.

_And sometimes,_ Doctor Gaile Fortner thought, _they bring deliveries of their own._ She was standing in front of the observation window, watching as a freighter went through the docking process. It was a rough cylinder of slag-surfaced metal, pocked with bubbles and lumps from the vacuum-condensation refining process. A crew module at one end with sensors and guidance systems, and rings of hydrazine steering jets.

Her eyes went past it to the view of Naxos hovering in space below them, the massive hydrogen-helium gas giant that was the second planet from the star Invictus. It possessed a bright coloring unlike most gas giants, the product of light from ionized hydrogen filtering through an upper cloud of sodium. It wasn't confirmed quite yet what caused the ionization, but Naxos' high mass and high temperature suggested that it might be a small 'brown dwarf', a large gas giant that gained nearly enough mass to ignite into a small star.

Between Platform 38 and the planet were scores of other platforms, both locally made and those constructed by the flood of volus and asari investment coming into the system. Platinum, a relatively rare metal, had been discovered in extensive deposits on Samothrace and was required in the clean-burning hydrogen fuel cells that powered private vehicles in the galaxy. Naxos' deep gravity well made mining difficult but, as the only gas giant in the system, it was more economical to mine than importing helium-3 through the mass relays.

That newfound economic clout, in addition to the USS's pacification and patrolling of a large swath of the Attican Traverse and the evacuation of just over a million drell before Rakhana's final collapse, had led to the Council's granting humanity an embassy on the Citadel just last year. The drakensis had been granted an embassy the very same day, ostensibly due to their own contributions to the galactic economy with the popularity of high quality artisan-crafted products from the Domination and their increasing influence on the galaxy's higher culture – many asari, in particular, seemed taken by their Classical-style fashions, their music, and some of their other live performance entertainments. Voices in some quarters, however, said that the Council had become alarmed at the rate at which the Draka fleets had been expanding and decided to grant them an embassy if only to get them to sign on to and abide by the Treaty of Farixen which would curb their shipbuilding to obligated numbers.

It was an open secret that the Domination was starting to build stingfighter carriers as a way around the limitations imposed by the treaty, an idea that the Council Races hadn't thought of and one which the turians were still dubious about.

Samothrace, on the other hand, didn't have the numbers to train enough pilots to maintain fleet carriers, and so was sticking with dreadnoughts as their primary capital ship. Observers with the Hierarchy were observing the turians' design and shipbuilding practices while Samothracian engineers were exploring numerous conceptual ideas and design layouts to produce warships that would provide the most bang for the smallest possible crews and resources. Anything to give them an edge over the numerically superior drakensis and batarians.

_Which is what this Project is about,_ Fortner thought as she heard the distinctive sounds of docking clamps locking in place. She turned to the hatch as the hiss of the corridor pressurizing with atmosphere sounded faintly through the overhead vents. The lights above the door shifted from a red light to a green with a klaxon _brrrrt_, and the locks on the door released with a _chunk_ sound. The hatch swung open slowly on oiled hinges to reveal three – four if you counted the newborn being held – people walking through the well-lit corridor.

Fortner stepped forward with an extended hand and a smile as they stepped through the hatch. "Mr and Mrs Fernandez? I am Doctor Gaile Fortner, head researcher here. Welcome to the Excelsior Project." She looked down at the teenage girl standing in front of the couple that was looking around dubiously, with the dark-bronzed skin, black hair and dark eyes that spoke of her Quechua-Hispanic heritage. "And this must be Chaska. I'm very pleased to meet you."

"Um... hi," the girl replied, shyness warring with adolescent annoyance at being treated like a little kid. The doctor felt a familiar mix of amusement and resignation. It was an attitude which she had become all too familiar with.

"If you will all follow me, we'll get you settled in," she continued, waving them further into the station and then leading the way. She could sense the two adults behind her starting to share the attitude of their daughter as they looked around at their surroundings. The corridor they were walking through was much like any other H3 platform around Naxos or, indeed, around any other gas giant in Samothracian space. Half-hearted lighting just good enough for visibility, metal-grill floors with wires and cables snaking around beneath, rough metal walls.

Fortner smiled as she stepped up to a door far beyond any observation ports and laid her hand against the screen set in the wall beside it. "Doctor Gaile Fortner, escorting new arrivals" she stated clearly. The screen flicked light at her eyes. A laser read the pattern of her retina; the information sped away as modulated light. Another scanned her palmprint, the abstract of her voice.

"Confirmed. Doctor Gaile Fortner. Delay, query." The AI – _no, VI,_ she reminded herself – called inside to the security station for confirmation. After a delay, the machine spoke again: "Query, confirmed. Doctor Gaile Fortner, proceed."

The door irised open with a sough of metal, revealing a circular doorway leading into the interior of the platform. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed the parents blinking around at the new corridor while young Chaska was frankly staring. It was brightly lit with smoothly painted metal walls, as well as the bars and handholds along the walls and ceiling common on any station in the event of a failure of the artificial gravity generated from the mass effect core.

"We're running this Project a differently than before," she explained. The Fernandez's had been part of the old New America Project, and had been stationed on the _New America_ during the Fall. At the point when Chaska Fernandez had still been in utero, in fact. "Instead of drawing unwanted attention by setting up an interdicted zone, we've decided to hide the Excelsior Project in plain sight, as it were." She smiled as they passed a door where several young teenagers were sitting at their schooldesks, looking up at the vidscreen where the teacher was bringing up notes about pre-Fall history and typing them onto their perscomps. "Naxos is already surrounded by stations, so one more is hardly noticeable.

"You'll find we've still maintained this as a small community, however," Fortner continued. "The outer portion of the hull is still operated as an H3 mining operation, while the interior is dedicated to the Project. The workers are all vetted and operate under the auspices of the SSI. There is no extranet access from here, I'm afraid." A scowl from Chaska and an amused glance between her parents. "Security, you understand."

They stopped next to a window looking into another classroom where several children were seated around a table. One boy with typical Anglo-Saxon features was staring at a pencil, brow furrowed as he gestured a hand towards it. Three adults were observing, one man standing casually next to some medical equipment while a woman sat in the seat next to him, watching the pencil intently. The third was a turian, arms folded across his chest as he watched the proceedings with an inscrutable expression on his alien features. As they watched the pencil rolled slightly as he made another gesture, then he slumped in his seat and hung his head, the very image of exhaustion. The teacher sitting next to him smiled and patted the teen on the shoulder, offering him a glass of juice.

"There's a turian here?" That was the father, sounding surprised.

Fortner turned back to him and nodded. "We've heard of biotics ever since we made contact with the Citadel, but it wasn't until recently that we've discovered any humans with the potential. The greater galaxy has far more experience with them, and so we've hired some carefully selected mercenaries as experts and consultants." She waved a hand onward and they continued down the corridor.

"We're reasonably certain that the development of these biotic-capable nodules throughout the nervous system has to do with exposure to element zero while in utero. It was fairly simple to figure out once we noted the common factors between Chaska and all the others." An understanding nod from the parents; they were already aware that most of the families brought here had been stationed on _New America_ during the war. More specifically, during the cleaning operations after the destruction of a Draka FTL ship that had been attacking the starship, collecting all the accumulated dust-form element zero along the hull. The others had been involved in other divisions that had involved research with element zero, which had almost certainly also included exposure.

A few minutes later, they stopped at a door in the residential section. "And here is your new home. It has all the basic utilities and comes with basic furniture that you can use or replace as you wish as your things are moved here from Samothrace by increments. The work and school schedules are posted in the kitchen." She extended a hand and shook hands with both adults and the teenage girl. "Again, welcome to the Excelsior Project. Your efforts will help to ensure the security of the United Systems of Samothrace."

* * *

Hiroshi Ishii, SSI agent and head of security for the Project, stood impassive, hands clasped behind his back, as he watched the vidscreens displaying the live feeds from the classrooms. His frown deepened as he saw yet another child barely move a pencil before having to stop, this one with a nosebleed. _We're not going to get anywhere at this rate, _he thought. The Institute's studies into biotics had outlined abilities such as lifting large objects – even people – into the air, propelling them away or pulling them towards the biotic, or even creating small gravitational vortices that could draw in enemies and debris. They were barely scratching the surface.

He turned as Doctor Fortner walked into the room and greeted her with a gruff nod. "Is the Fernandez family settling in?" he asked.

"Well enough," the doctor replied as she walked to the chair in front of the desk, waited for his nod of approval, then sat with a sigh. "The usual attitude from the prospect." A sour smile. "It's too bad that it's taken this long to discover the common threads between them. Adjustment might have been easier if they weren't into adolescence before we had to bring them here."

Ishii grunted and sat down in his chair, placing his hands on the desk in front of him. "We've been sloppy the past decade, trying to get everything built. We let the youth training camps slide because there were more crucial issues to deal with. This generation lacks discipline." He clasped his hands together. "Their terms of National Service should hopefully take up the slack."

Fortner suppressed a wry smile. Japan never had assimilated Western culture as well as they had Western technologies; there had been the opportunity to help reconstruct the Japanese during the military occupation of their home islands after the Eurasian War, but the looming threat of the Domination had forced the Alliance to bring them in as a full member as soon as possible. They never had fully embraced the Western culture of the individual.

_On the other hand, he has a point,_ she admitted to herself. Young children hadn't had much to do during the construction of the colonies, and so had found themselves with far more idle time than previous generations had. It had led to an unprecedented rebellious subculture and, after contact with the Citadel, an unhealthy fascination with the extranet. A new youth organization, the Galactic Scouts, had been established a couple of years before to help reforge national unity among the younger generations and teach them basic survival skills.

"That will be the last family we'll be bringing in for a while," she replied, changing the subject. "We've just about mined all of the families involved in the New America Project for biotic potentials. Most of those exposed had no effect whatsoever to eezo exposure, while that smaller percentage developed health problems or suffered spontaneous abortions."

Ishii grunted again and narrowed his eyes in thought. "It seems wasteful, waiting around for pregnant women to become exposed to element zero and hoping that they fall within that small percentage that creates a biotic prospect."

Fortner opened her mouth to reply, then closed it and studied the SSI man. He stared back at her, his expression unreadable, for a silent stretch. Finally, he continued: "Having biotic capable humans would go a long way towards evening out the advantages that drakensis and ghouloon soldiers have over our marines."

"So it would." The doctor continued to study him for a long moment, then nodded and stood up from her seat. A moment of hesitation, then: "Perhaps something can be done about that."

Another wordless grunt from the Institute spook. "Perhaps." He reached over and hit a key on his perscomp, then looked back at the doctor. "Thank you for your time, Doctor Fortner. If you'll excuse me, I have some work that needs to be done."

The head researcher nodded and turned towards the door to the office, leaving without another word.

* * *

**VIRUNGA BIOCONTROL INSTITUTE**

**WEAPONS RESEARCH DIVISION**

**WEST RIFT PROVINCE, EARTH**

**SOL SYSTEM, LOCAL CLUSTER**

**MARCH 28, 2012**

The Virunga Biocontrol Institute was built in the hills overlooking Lake Kivu, at the southern edge of the Virunga range. Nearly a century and a half old now, almost as old as Draka settlement in these volcanic highlands. Low whitewashed buildings of stone block, roofs of plum-colored tile, almost lost among the vegetation; the gardens were flamboyantly lovely even by the Domination's standards, fertile lava soils and abundant rain and a climate of eternal spring. National park stretched north and west, to the Ituri lowlands: haunt of gorilla and chimp, elephant and hippo and leopard; of the Bambuti pygmies also, left to their Old Stone Age existence.

The city of Arjunanda lay two thousand feet below by the waters, turned to a model by distance: buildings white and blue and violet with marble and tile, avenues bordered with jacaranda and colonnades roofed in climbing rose and frangipani. Even the factories and labor compounds that ringed it were comely, bordered by hedge and garden. Sails speckled the waves, and there were pleasure boats beating back towards the docks. Silvery dirigibles and the occasional aircar floated through the air above the scene.

Charles McReady, clad in the olive-green uniform of the Security Directorate, scowled at the scene without really seeing it. Behind him a woman dressed in a white silk and gold brocade suit with ruffled shirt strode onto the terrace behind him, hands resting on her gunbelt holding one of the new Tolgren pistols that utilized mass accelerator technology. Her black hair was pulled back in a bun, streaked with silver. She stepped up to the railing next to him and leaned one hip against it, folding her arms and watching him with a slight curve of her lips, a slightly mocking expression.

McReady looked at her and, seeing her expression, his scowl deepened. "Gods curse it, Shirley, not a word."

She shrugged her shoulders in response and looked down towards the city below. "There is a certain irony to th' situation," she remarked. "Yo' people pushed so hard fo' the development of the New Race. If we'd a' waited a few mo' decades, things mighta been different."

The SD man ground his teeth and slammed a fist onto the railing. "'No biotic potential in the drakensis genome'," he quoted aloud, followed by a string of less printable words. "None in the ghouloons neither."

Shirley chuckled and quirked an eyebrow as she looked back at him. "And theah _is_ biotic potential in the servus. Who we've mind-gelded to be non-aggressive, and so useless as Janissaries."

The two of them had known each other for a good many years, having been the proteges of Eric von Shrakenberg and Louise Gayner. They were both from the last generation of human Draka, and had risen high in their respective factions before the deaths of their mentors.

"They could be wrong," McReady said, straightening and turning towards the Conservative Senator. "They as much as admitted they haven't done as much testin' as they could on the drakensis."

"And there's a reason fo' that," Shirley responded sharply. "They the _Race_, Charlie. We kin test as many ghouloons and servus to destruction as we please, but _not_ Citizens." Her eyes narrowed. "Yo' people in Skull House have always had trouble seein' that not everyone in the State has a tattoo on they neck." She met his scowl with equanimity and shrugged her shoulders. "They'll keep lookin' into the problem, but it isn't as if the War Directorate is lackin' in any case. We still whupped the turians in the last war, an' the drakensis and ghouloons are Loki on wheels as is. Biotics kin do some pretty tricks, but it ain't the end of the world."

McReady turned his head back to the view and let out a deep sigh through his nose. "Maybe," he mumbled grudgingly.

She slapped the Security Directorate strategos on the shoulder. "Come on," she said. "I heard there's a fine Tamil place down to Arjunanda. Let's get somethin' t' eat."


	20. Chapter 20

**THE ARCHOS**

**CITADEL**

**WIDOW SYSTEM**

**SERPENT NEBULA**

**MAY 5, 2014**

The Archos had once been nothing more than a neighborhood bar in one section of the Wards. People had come there to eat, drink, and relax; everyday people who lived and worked in the Wards. The common folk, if you could call such an interesting menagerie of aliens common.

That was before the Domination of the Draka had emerged onto the galactic stage and the drakensis had arrived on the Citadel. Some said it was the name of the place, so similar to the name of their chief elected official, that had first attracted the Draka to this otherwise unremarkable bar. There were plenty of more popular clubs in the Wards where people could go to be seen... or to be part of the scene.

But the drakensis, uncomfortable in loud and cramped surroundings, had found the quieter Archos more to their liking and had invaded and conquered the place as surely as India or Europe. The locals had been intimidated out by the throngs of Draka in War Directorate black and the silk, linen and velvet suits of Citizens visiting the Citadel on the business of their State or the Combines.

Janet Lefarge stood just around a corner in the back of the place, her pale blue eyes scanning back and forth across the crowd, her eyes never lingering on one individual for long. Long experience had taught her that many people could feel it when people watched them, and she certainly didn't want to attract too much attention to herself in this place. She had, in fact, arrived hours ago when there had been hardly anyone in the Archos to avoid any extraneous contact with drakensis.

_Nothing yet,_ ran through her mind amidst a tinge of annoyance. Her contact was late, but according to the psych eval on her dossier that was unsurprising. _Still annoying though._ Letting a breath sigh out through her nostrils, Janet turned her attention back to the stage in the center of the bar.

Sitting at one side of the stage were one of the aspects of Draka entertainment the owner of the bar had taken advantage of to cater to its newest regulars: a live band of four female servus with the ivory-skin, straight black hair and slanted eyes of East Asia. They each wore a silk qipao, a form-fitting dress, of different colors with embroidered Chinese dragons. They were playing classical Chinese music with a liuqin mandolin, an erhu fiddle, a yangqin hammered dulcimer, and a guzheng plucked zither – a traditional teahouse ensemble.

Accompanying the Earth-based music were the electronic beats and pulses that seemed to dominate the clubs of the greater galaxy. They made an incongruous combination, but the mix of the two actually seemed to work. Similarly, the qipao-clad asari dancers – whose dresses possessed designs and cuts far more provocative than those of the servus musicians – who swayed and moved languorously with the music seemed to complement both it and the band.

Janet frowned slightly. Slavery was technically illegal on the Citadel, but the Archos had gotten around that by establishing contracts with Draka slave traders for their creche trained live entertainment performers to go on musical 'tours' to the Citadel. Annoyingly, it seemed to skirt the regulations enough that C-Sec was turning a blind eye, while the Chinese ensemble had been preceded by a group of East European Gypsies and another performing Indian Carnatic music.

Her eyes went to the orange number tattoo below the left ear of one of the servus musicians, then to the placid expression on her face. She felt a chill run along her spine and swallowed convulsively as she averted her gaze, feeling slightly nauseous. _God, those servus creep me out,_ she thought. They were all perfectly content to be slaves, happily doing whatever their masters wished. _They've been reduced to domestic animals, playthings, and they've gene-engineered them into _liking_ it._

Her eyes came to rest on a group of drakensis sitting at, and standing around, a table, drinking hanar liquors and watching the dancers up on the stage intently. One of them said something that made the others smile and one or two to chuckle. Janet's lips compressed into a tight line. It was bad enough that the Council was looking the other way when it came to both them and the batarians. _But for them to be doing so damn _well_!_ she thought with a rush of anger. They were the latest darlings of galactic high culture, and provoked a sort of sick fascination among many across Citadel Space.

Publicly they were as courteous with the other races as they were among their own Race, though they had become infamous for getting into fights and duels whenever they felt they had been insulted, or whenever their innate drakensis competitiveness got the better of them. But a decade of running ops for the SSI had shown Janet that it was all a veneer, that below the diplomatically 'correct' facade they put up the Domination's Krypteia people were as busy now – busier – as they had been during the Protracted Struggle.

_But nothing concrete yet,_ she thought unhappily. She wanted nothing better than to find some piece of incontrovertible proof for the human ambassador to present to the Council, something that would spur them to send the Council Fleet – with the Samothracian Naval Forces at their head – through the Charon mass relay to turn Archona and the rest of the Domination into a series of smoking craters.

Janet was stirred from her reverie when a figure approached the group of drakensis. An asari, dressed in a mostly Draka Classical-style gown of fine materials imported from Thessia itself – a purple burgundy ensemble that left one blue shoulder bare and had a cut over the midriff to reveal a flat toned stomach and an unmistakable navel. She bowed her head slightly to the drakensis, respectfully but not at all subservient, and made apparently pleasant small-talk with them.

The SSI agent took a moment to run the alien's features through her mind, then nodded to herself fractionally as the name came to her. That was the proprietor of the Archos, an asari matriarch named Besirea. She had first opened the bar around the time the French and Indian War was being fought on Earth and had been running it ever since. She had taken the influx of drakensis into her establishment in stride and transformed it from a local bar into a higher-class lounge catering to her mostly drakensis clientele, though there were minority amounts of batarians and asari and the odd members of the other races – with the notable exception of humans, of course. _No Samothracian would normally step willingly into a Snake pit._

Janet stepped back from the corner as the asari bowed her head to the group again, then started making her way towards the back. The human backed along the wall until she was ensconced in a dark corner with a view of the door leading to the back office, then leaned back until her shoulders were resting against the wall and stuffed her hands into her jacket's pockets. She waited silently as Besirea walked past, now with two armored turian bodyguards in touched the glowing green panel next to the door to open it, and went through. The turians stepped to either side of the doorway and took up positions, grabbing a compact rectangle from a locking holster on their armor and hitting a button that caused a handle, stock and barrel to unfold from it. Now armed with assault rifles, they held them at the ready in their arms and visibly settled themselves for a long wait, their avian eyes alert.

A couple of silent minutes more. Finally, she pushed off from the wall with a flexing of her back to her shoulders and walked casually towards the two turians, her hands still in her pockets. The turians stiffened as she approached from out of the darkness, starting to bring their rifles to bear on her, then visibly paused as they looked her over.

Janet felt a flash of annoyance as she stood there and let them. She knew that aliens had a difficult time telling humans and drakensis apart, and objectively she could even understand it. Both races had roughly similar appearances and were far closer genetically than, say, an asari and a turian; _they_ didn't even have the same basic amino acids. _It's still annoying._

But she was wearing a light jacket over a tank top, blue denim pants and utilitarian boots – a far plainer outfit than any a drakensis would be caught dead wearing. But, more basically, her black hair was also longer than the Draka norm in a bob cut, and her shoulders were thinner and musculature less pronounced. Humans were a far rarer sight on the Citadel – most stayed in Samothracian space out of an instilled sense of civic duty – but the other species had largely learned what cues to look for to tell the difference.

After she felt the tension leak out of the situation, Janet pulled her hands out of her pockets and let them hang at her sides, palms facing the guards and fingers spread. "I have an appointment," she remarked. "I believe I'm expected?"

The two bodyguards exchanged a quick look, then one brought a three-fingered hand to an earpiece. "Tell her there's a human here. Says she has an appointment." Silence, then a nod. "Alright." He turned his attention back to the visitor and said, "Go on in."

Janet nodded in reply and walked through as the door's halves slid open. Her footsteps sounded clearly as she walked made her way through a storage room filled with lockers and crates, and she noted a couple of salarian workers off to one side chatting in their rapid-fire way. They watched curiously as the human walked past, then their conversation resumed again behind her.

A pair of doors at the back separated by a short corridor slid open as she approached. She walked through and paused briefly at what met her eyes before continuing. She was in an office appointed in such luxury that none of the drakensis outside in the Archos' main room would have been ashamed to call it their own.

There were three levels to the office, each with a few steps leading up to the next one, that drew the eye inevitably the desk at the back and the person seated behind it. Janet was on the lowest one; the second, which dominated the room, was taken up by small lounging area made up of a table and surrounding couches. The table itself was crystal on brass filigree stands that looked vaguely Arab, while the couches were upholstered in leather from some animal of non-Terran origin. The walls had silk hangings patterned with Draka style murals of African landscapes and hunting scenes, as well as paintings of asari origin that showed spacescapes of nebulae and the surfaces of exotic planets. The uppermost level at the back of the room was mostly taken up with a large desk of some unfamiliar glossy-russet wood whose surface was occupied by a perscomp, several datapads and a crystal goblet whose stem was inlaid with gold, filled with a pale green liquid.

And seated behind the desk was Besirea, lounging against the back of her office chair with casual relaxation as she watched the human take in the surroundings with a smile. Standing to either side of her were two more guards, these two massive krogan with labyrinths of scars disfiguring the faces and throats that were the only parts of them visible outside their armor. They each held large shotguns that looked as if they would have broken the arm of any human that tried to fire them.

Two more guards stepped up to either side of her, an asari and a salarian. The salarian began tapping on the holographic interface of his omni-tool as he scanned it over her over her. Janet brought her hands up to shoulder height and let him. "There's a pistol at the small of my back," she commented before the scan could get that far – better to get that out of the way and try to establish a mutual trust. An electric squeal from the omni-tool confirmed her statement a moment later, and the asari guard lifted the back of her jacket and pulled the pistol from the holster to the right of her spine. Besirea inclined her head in acknowledgment of the gesture and beckoned her forward.

Janet walked forward through the lounge area while the two guards behind her resumed their stations at their end of the office. Besirea noted the disapproving glance she shot the murals along the way and gave a light, melodic chuckle as she beckoned the SSI agent into the chair before her desk.

"I know your people have their... issues with the Draka," the asari matriarch began as her guest sat, "but surely their actions aren't the fault of these lovely tapestries?"

Janet's expression remained neutral as she watched the asari's face in silence for a long moment, then replied. "Your people never experienced the Draka at their worst. When you experience that level of ruthlessness, of... evil, anything of theirs is inevitably tainted."

Besirea considered the words, then gave a regretful sigh as she took the crystal goblet in one hand and held it idly. "A shame you see it that way." A smile as she took a sip and then watched the human over the edge of the glass. "Someone as lovely as you shouldn't spend so much of an unfortunately short span on such a fierce hatred."

Janet blinked in shock before she could stop herself, taken aback. _Wha-? But she's a woman!_ her mind gibbered. She shifted in her seat as she recomposed herself, admonishing herself internally. _Yes, she looks female, but the asari are a monogendered species,_ she reminded herself. Still, it had been a shock; same-sex relationships were, if not forbidden, frowned upon in Samothracian society, a reaction to the Drakas' loose sexuality from before the Fall, as well as humanity's low numbers that were in need of strengthening.

Besirea, with the experience her long centuries of life lent her, noticed the effect her comment had and smiled, taking a longer drink before setting the goblet back down and resting her hands on the desktop. "Let's get straight to business, shall we?" she said, cutting through the awkward moment to spare the human woman any further embarrassment. "Our mutual friends arranged this meeting because I have some information that may be of interest to you."

The human took a breath through her nose before nodding, partly in acknowledgment and partly in thanks for moving on to another subject. "Yes," she confirmed, then sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. "If you'll pardon me, though, I'm... surprised that you're offering." She spared a glance towards the silken murals for emphasis.

The asari followed her gaze, then spread her hands. "I admit that I admire them to some extent," she admitted. "Their patronage of my establishment has made me quite wealthy, and I find their arts sublime.

"However," she continued, "further investigation did reveal the rather... offputting underpinnings to their society. Or should I say Final Society?" A quirk of her mouth that could have been either a wry smile or a grimace of distaste. "Their art deserves its admiration for being merely what it is, and their species has made its own contributions to the galaxy. But their Domination should _not_ be allowed to grow unchecked." A smile that reached her eyes this time. "That is where you come in, is it not?"

Janet sat in silence for a long moment as she studied the owner of the Archos, then nodded slowly and let herself smile. "So it is," she said. Her eyes followed the asari's hand as she opened one of the drawers on her side of the desk and pulled out a datapad, then held it out over the desk. She reached out and gripped the datapad to take it from her, but looked up, startled, when the matriarch held it firm.

Besirea's eyes held hers when they met. "We both work for the same cause, Miss Lefarge." At the SSI agent's unspoken question: "Civilization. To hold back anything that would extinguish it."

Janet found herself smiling again, and the asari matriarch released the datapad to be slid into an inner pocket of the human's jacket. She stood from her seat and, before turning away, said, "For civilization." With another nod, she turned and walked away, stopping to retrieve her pistol before walking out.


	21. Chapter 21

**TRAS**

**BESTAT, BAREK SYSTEM**

**SKYLLIAN VERGE**

**BATARIAN HEGEMONY**

**MAY 7, 2014**

Bestat was one of the Batarian Hegemony's newest colonies, settled barely three years ago in the Hegemony's drive to secure the Skyllian Verge against possible human expansion. Ideally located near the nexus of several primary and secondary relays, the colony not only secured a large portion of the Verge for the batarians, it was already one its busiest trade ports.

The majority of the world's population were batarians, and only they enjoyed the full privileges of true citizenship under local law. But like any colony world with a prosperous economy, there was always a steady influx of visitors and immigrants from every recognized species across Citadel space.

This had worked to Dublo Flemin's advantage when he had arrived at the spaceport at the colony's primary city, Tras. It had teemed with a densely packed crowd of mostly non-batarians with which the salarian had easily blended in. Unfortunately, it also meant that they – and he – were subject to heightened security procedures.

The batarians were paranoid as a people, their authoritarian government even more so. Dublo could have easily used his Spectre status to clear his way through the screening process with little trouble, but that would have raised alarms throughout the colony that would have made his recon more difficult. Besides that, it went against the grain of his experience with the salarian Special Tasks Group; better not to let anyone know you were ever there.

_Batarian paranoia is most vexing. Likely due to Khar'shan still being divided into nation-states,_ Dublo deduced inwardly. A frown as he continued to hack the lock on the door he was trying to bypass. _No, likely cultural as well. Council races possess decentralized governments. Centralized batarians, drakensis and humans _quite_ paranoid. Hmm. Volus, elcor and hanar less so. Perhaps a biological aspect as well-_

Those thoughts ran through his mind in very little time; the salarian high metabolism that contributed to their short lifespan also allowed their minds and bodies to work faster than most sapient races. He was stirred from his contemplation as the light on the lock turned green and clicked open. He quickly stepped through, frowning at the noise the door made as it slid closed behind him. _Requires more maintenance._

Dublo crept quietly but swiftly through the darkened corridors of Tras' colonial administration building. He had taken the precaution of obtaining the security layout for the structure beforehand, but security patrol routes were randomly changed. He had no real reason to be here in particular, he was simply trawling for information; his people took the phrase 'knowledge is power' as an almost holy writ. _No, not completely true,_ he thought. _The batarians are aggressive, more so since the drakensis and humans emerged._ A batarian fleet had bombarded the salarian colony on Mannovai over 200 years ago, and the Hegemony had annexed the independent asari colony of Esan – now known as Lorek – just over 100 years ago. Ever since the humans had started consolidating a hold on a large swath of the Attican Traverse and some fringe systems of the Skyllian Verge, and especially since they and the drakensis had started practicing 'joint military exercises' and 'cultural exchanges', the batarians had been even more belligerent than usual, rather than keeping to their more usual opportunistic aggression. Keeping an eye on the quadocular race was a necessity for a Council Spectre, whose duty was to preserve and protect galactic stability.

_Do wish I didn't have to pay for my own equipment, however._ The salarian STG was fully funded by the Salarian Union, while a Spectre had to provide his own means. _An honor to be chosen, but not a career for the economically ambitious,_ he thought with mild amusement. The Council said the Spectres were the embodiment of courage, determination and self-reliance; he occasionally wondered if they took their speeches a little too literally.

_On the other hand, Spectres are disavowable resource,_ he reasoned as he stopped short of a corner and pressed himself against a wall, hearing footsteps in the hallway beyond; too close to try and backtrack, he'd be seen before he got to sufficient cover. _We carry out our missions in secrecy with no direct backing because we must do whatever is necessary to allow Citadel Space to rest easy during sleeping cycles. Nobody really wants to know what we have to do, the horrors we keep at bay._

Two batarian guards stepped into view from the adjoining corridor. Dublo waited, wondering if they were going to continue past. When they paused and their heads began to turn to look down the adjoining halls, the salarian pulled the stunner from his belt and sprang forward even as he fired it at the one looking in his direction. The batarian stiffened as the electrical current coursed through his body, letting out barely a squeak before he dropped to the floor, unconscious. He dropped the stunner in the next instant; it would be useless until it recharged, which would take far too long for this confrontation. The other guard began to turn at the noise his partner had made, then began to raise his assault rifle as he caught the motions of his falling comrade and the oncoming salarian out of the corners of his eyes.

A precisely aimed punch to the neck immobilized his vocal cords, followed by a punch to the flat nose between both sets of eyes. He brought a fist crashing down into the assault rifle, knocking it from a grip loosened by pain and disorientation, then brought an arm forward over the neck, swiftly moving behind his opponent for more leverage as he brought a steady pressure down onto the arteries pumping oxygenated blood to his brain.

The batarian struggled against the pressure, scrabbling at the arm around his neck, then tried to bring a hand down to grab the pistol clipped to his armor at the hip. Dublo wrenched the batarian sideways, throwing him off-balance and causing his hand to flail away from the weapon for precious moments as he instinctively tried to keep his balance. Before he could make another try, he noticeably weakened and then slumped in the salarian Spectre's arms. A few moments more to make sure, then he quickly dragged him into the other hall and laid him against the wall. More precious seconds to grab the second guard and also drag him into the adjoining hall; theirs had been a set path for patrols, and having them just out of sight would buy him crucial seconds before the next patrol discovered them.

Dublo hurried down the hallway, scooping his stunner up along the way and clipping it back onto his belt. The scuffle with the two guards hadn't taken too long, and hadn't produced much noise, but experience had taught him not to take any chances. _At least they are still alive._ Spectre or no, the batarians would kill him on sight if their comrades were found dead, giving him no chance to present his credentials.

He continued through the administration building until he came near another patrol. This time he had enough distance from them to carefully work his way around them, using his omni-tool to disrupt the camera feeds long enough for him to move past them. To those monitoring the screens in the security room they would appear as brief spurts of static. _Can't afford to do that too often. Guards may get suspicious._ He wished there were some way to hack the system to substitute, say, footage of empty corridors rather than utilizing simple distortion, but such a sophisticated program was beyond current omni-tool technology. _A shame this turn on my wheel of life has to be in such a primitive time._

Finally he reached the door to the data archives and was unsurprised to see that it required a keycard, access code and biological identification confirmed via voice and retinal scans. _Paranoid,_ he thought again as he set to work. A little bit later the corners of his mouth turned down in disapproval. _Primitive,_ he thought with a slight sniff. _At least three years out of date._ The Hegemony usually had better security, but their usual iron-fisted approach had grown somewhat lax with the uncharacteristic speed of their expansion through the Verge, strongly encouraged by their drakensis friends.

A chime sounded and the wall panel next to the door switched from red to green as the door slid open. Dublo pulled the stunner from his belt and slipped in, looking around quickly. No one was inside; the room was dark, lit only by the glow of the illuminated power button on the computer terminal and the green glow of the inside wall panel indicating that the door was unlocked. It wasn't much, but it would do.

After locking the door behind himself to turn it back to a less suspicious red, he quickly went to the terminal and set the stunner down next to it so he could reach it more easily if he were to be happened upon by a guard or a late working clerk. He quickly set to work, his long fingers blurring over the interface in the precise taps of long experience, keeping an auditory membrane perked for sounds from the corridor outside.

After he had hacked through the system's layers of security, his interest was soon piqued as he scanned through the various directories. _Hmm, as I thought. Lots of exploration missions based here – not all of them batarian!_ He opened one of the more suspicious pathways at random and scanned through the accompanying figures and notes. It was never explicitly said but it was strongly suggestive that many of the exploring ships were drakensis in origin, possibly even military vessels from their Aerospace Command.

_Not very likely to be turian or human,_ he considered wryly. The Batarian Hegemony had cool relations with the Turian Hierarchy due to their ships patrolling human space, and they were angry with the United Systems of Samothrace over their seizure of unofficial batarian colonies throughout the Attican Traverse, the element zero-rich moon of Caleston chief among them. _The asari mostly stay closer to their own space. It could be salarian researchers, but I would have heard of any of those._ The other races of Citadel Space ranged into ever further degrees of improbability.

_Intriguing. This _is_ worth further study._ Dublo synced his omni-tool to the terminal and began compressing the information to a more manageable size before downloading it onto his omni-tool. The download was about three quarters of the way complete when the facility went into high alert.

There were no blaring alarms, no flashing lights. The download onto his omni-tool's data storage suddenly ceased as the terminal's screen went back its default setting abruptly. He tapped a few keys experimentally and was unsurprised to see that the interface had been frozen. _High alert indeed._ Nobody would be able to do anything with the facility's terminals until security canceled the alert. _Must have discovered the guards. Time to depart._

Hoping the data he had managed to download would be sufficient, the salarian Spectre shut off his omni-tool's holographic interface, grabbed his stunner, and hurried back to the door. A frown as he took a moment to prepare himself. As soon as the door opened, security would be alerted to the activity and the guards would zero in on the data archives. Taking a firmer grip on the stunner and checking the assault rifle clipped to his armor, he unlocked the door and quickly slipped into the hallway as it slid open.

As he made his way quickly through the hallways, he initiated the disruption program on his omni-tool to jam as many of the security cameras within his vicinity as possible. _Should widen the area they'll have to search._ Anything that gave him even a slight advantage was needful to get out of the government facility. _The batarians will likely kill me or make me... disappear if I'm captured in here._ Outside, in a more public area, he'd be safe; the death of a Spectre at the hands of the batarian military with civilian witnesses was too chancy for the Hegemony, not if they didn't want to risk retribution from the Council.

Heavy running steps. Dublo quickly sidestepped to the side of the corridor and fell to one knee, unclipping his assault rifle and extending it to its full length before setting it on the floor in front of him. An instant later two batarian guards rounded the corner blindly at a trot, assault rifles in their hands. The first one caught the blast from the stunner and stiffened with a croak. Before he began to slump to the ground, Dublo had dropped his stunner, scooped up the assault rifle and rolled sideways as the other guard let loose a wild burst from his rifle in the general direction of where he had been. The salarian came back up to one knee in the middle of the corridor and squeezed the trigger of his assault rifle, letting the steady stream of bullets deplete his shields, shred his armor and rip through his flesh of his legs.

The batarian fell to the ground with a scream that changed pitch in the next instant as the salarian ran forward and stomped a foot down onto one of the hands holding the assault rifle. He quickly reversed his own rifle and slammed the stock between the center of the guard's upper set of eyes. After waiting an instant to make sure as he lost consciousness, Dublo hurried back and frowned as he saw that his stunner had been hit by one of the stray bullets, rendering it useless. _Unfortunate. Newest model straight from Sur'Kesh._ A regretful sigh. _Have to order another._

Leaving the broken stunner behind he continued to make his way out of the building, avoiding the guards when he could, disabling those he couldn't, and killing those that proved especially troublesome. He sniffed as he reached the door he had entered the building through and began hacking through the security lockdown that had seized the lock. _Their dedication to duty is commendable. A shame it isn't directed toward better ends._

Several long seconds later the door slid open and the Spectre hurried out of the building and quickly made his way through a warren of alleys towards the public streets of Tras. He stopped long enough to collapse his rifle and clip it back to his armor before stepping out of the alley and making his way towards the spaceport. If anyone found the sight of a fully armed and armored salarian walking the streets odd, they kept it to themselves; he made it to the spaceport undisturbed.

As he approached one of the security stations within the terminal, Dublo could tell that the alert had been spread towards the spaceports. There's was a long line of non-batarians waiting to depart, which was unsurprising. Batarians looked down on the other, binocular races of the galaxy – they thought those with two eyes lacked intellect and sophistication – and many would take any opportunity to hold a moment of superiority over them, even these petty officials. The drakensis had largely gotten around that prejudice by being the only other race to practive slavery and possess castes as parts of their society, though the latter were more unofficial in some respects in the Domination.

What _was_ surprising were all the actual batarians waiting in line. Normally citizens of the Hegemony had priority access through security and customs checkpoints over everyone else, skipping ahead of aliens waiting for hours. _Fast reaction time. Maybe security is not as lackadaisical as I had thought._ A slight frown. _Unfortunate. This will compromise the data I seized._ _No helping it._

The batarian guards bristled as they saw him start walking past the line waiting to get past the checkpoint, then reached for their weapons when they got a better view of how he was accoutered. "Stop right there, salarian," one of them growled as he approached, leveling an assault rifle at his chest. "You have a death wish? Put your hands up, or I'll-"

Dublo snapped his identification out of a storage port in his armor and held it facing the guard before he could react. The guard's lip curled in a snarl at the sudden movement and he began to say something as two of his eyes flicked towards the document. The words visibly died as he took in the import of the document. The rifle was lowered quickly and the guard straightened as he tilted his head in deference.

"I apologize, sir. I didn't know you were a Spectre." His voice was loud enough to carry to the other guards, who hurriedly lowered their weapons as well.

"Quite alright," Dublo replied in the typically quick speech of his species. "I'm going to be departing now."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." The batarian stepped back and to one side, head still tilted submissively. The salarian strode past him and through the checkpoint, the guards and people near the head of the line staring after him.

Word of a Spectre departing so soon after the intrusion at the colonial administration building would undoubtedly raise flags. _Have to analyze the data for any actionable intel and utitilize it as quickly as possible before any opportunities are lost._

An hour later he was safely ensconced in his personal ship and set on a course for the nearest mass relay. Dublo set the controls for autopilot and synced his omni-tool to the ship's computer, downloading the data and uncompressing it. After that was done, he began running some complex algorithms and custom-designed search engines he had obtained from a crooked – or more than usual – information broker to sort through the data.

While he waited for them to complete, he meticulously examined and cleaned his weapons and armor before setting them in their appropriate containers. That done, he logged onto the extranet and pulled up some catalogues, looking through the selection of military-grade stunners. He found the model he had lost on Bestat but was surprised to discover it was being sold at a significant discount. "Ah, a new model!" He perked up as he saw that the new one had a power source that had been refined with aspects obtained from the superconductors utilized by the Draka and Samothracians, reducing its recharge time by .08 percent.

Pleased, he placed the order to be delivered to one of his drops on the Citadel. He could have obtained the model similar to his old one at a much lower rate, but once he'd seen that the newer model had increased performance – no matter how minute – the thought had never crossed his mind, a reaction common among the technophilic salarian people.

Dublo was debating over which sort of ration pack to open for a meal – _Plenty of burgat from Bestat, but it doesn't go well with tupari juice_ – when the computer chimed to let him know that the sorting had been completed. Putting the decision aside for the moment, he grabbed a pouch of the juice and went back to the pilot's seat. He punched up the results as he sipped at his drink, eyes flicking back and forth across the screen.

Surprise made him blink both sets of eyelids. There was a lone file that had been mostly downloaded before the alert had prohibited access to the data archives, and whose security had been scrambled by the sudden cut off. "Strange," he murmured to himself. It was by itself on a level of access that listed only directories, and he hadn't seen it during his previous examination at Tras' colonial administration; his photographic memory was sure of that. His fingers tapped away as he set algorithms to analyze the security surrounding the file while he read through the incomplete lines of code. He was more curious as to why he hadn't seen this file before instead of its actual contents.

"Ah," he exclaimed a long while later. "A cloaked file. Clever." Unlike the other files he had downloaded, this one had been hidden using a binary layer of OS software. The other files were perfectly visible using the one layer of the operating system that was prevalent in the data archives, however the other file could only be seen when someone using a device utilizing the second layer of OS software – an omni-tool, say, or a perscomp – hooked it into the network and used _it_ to scan through the archives. It was otherwise completely invisible to anyone else without the additional software. He had lucked out in that the partial download had scrambled the security layer's code enough that the junk data had allowed it to become visible.

"Curious. _Very_ curious." What was so important in this one file that it required this level of security? After another drink from his juice, Dublo set the pouch aside and began unscrambling the file to find out.

* * *

**GALLATIN TERRITORY**

**SAMOTHRACE**

**INVICTUS SYSTEM, EXODUS CLUSTER**

**UNITED SYSTEMS OF SAMOTHRACE**

**MAY 8, 2014**

There was a slight chill in the air in the high hills of the territory of Gallatin, situated on the northern edge of the belt of settlement that was continuing its spread outward from the Samothracian capital of Jefferson. Janet Lefarge was wearing a light jacket as she watched a group of children play in the yard in front of her parents' ranch house, a low sprawling stabilized-adobe structure. Dark mountains loomed large on the northern horizon, and young Ponderosa pine trees brought to maturity from the _New America's_ seeds lined the outer edge of the grounds, with one planted in the middle of the field for future climbing, tire swings and tree forts when it got taller.

She was smiling as one young boy ran for one end of the yard, a foam football clenched under one arm as he was pursued by a crowd of screaming, yelling boys and a few girls. He grabbed the football and held it aloft in victory as he went past the edge of the picnic table that marked the endzone, a bright grin on his face and sandy brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. A group of other boys fell on him with cheers, slaps on the back and high fives.

Janet turned her head as her twin sister, Iris, approached, also smiling at the scene. Unlike Janet, her hair was in a pony tail that swept down to the middle of her back and she wore a simple cotton print dress. "Little Frederick is shooting up like a weed," Janet remarked as the distance closed between the two.

"With energy to match," Iris agreed with a weary smile. She looked at her sister. "I wish you could be around to visit more, Jannie. God knows Nate and I don't mind, and little Fred loves to see you."

Before Janet could answer, a high voice piped out, "Aunt Janet!" The next thing she knew, a solid weight had run full tilt into her and wrapped little arms around her waist.

"Oof! Hi there, sprout." She smiled down into the beaming face, staring up at her with pale blue eyes much like her and her sister's. His face, still round with puppy fat, was a mix of her sister and the long and bony looks of her husband Nate Stoddard, Jr. _He_ was over by the grill that was the centerpiece of this gathering of family and family friends, a glass of beer in his hand as he kept a critical eye on the grilling hamburgers and hot dogs while he chatted with the other men. He glanced over and gave Janet a smile and nod, a smile that broadened at the sight of his son with her.

"I got my Galactic Scouts uniform!" The boy said enthusiastically; the universal youth movement had taken on the importance that the National Scouts had had back in the old USA.

"Hey, that's great!" Janet ruffled her nephew's hair, which caused him to retreat from his clinch and allowed her to breath slightly easier. _Phew! He's going to be a strong one,_ she thought as Fred pushed his hair back out of his eyes, laughing.

She looked up from Fred and spotted a drell boy sitting by himself at one of the picnic tables, wearing a heavier coat than the human children and watching the playing group with pupilless black eyes. Surprised, she looked around and saw a drell man talking with her father, Frederick Kustaa Lefarge – little Frederick's namesake – where he sat in a lawn chair. Her father looked very much like his age though he still had a full head of hair, completely gray as it was.

_He's 66 now,_ Janet realized with a shock. _How did that happen?_ She had seen him off and on during the past decade, most of her time taken up with her work in the Institute. Now he was retired after the establishment of the Samothracian civilian government, and was wrongly blamed by a large minority of people for the Fall while some felt he had overstepped his bounds in bringing the drell to Samothrace.

Janet herself was mixed about the reptile-like race her people had rescued from their doomed homeworld. They weren't as alien as many of the other species in the galaxy – they were humanoid and possessed human-like appearances – and their rescue had been the most symbolic reason for humanity's being granted an embassy on the Citadel, but they were still sufficiently different enough to rile a latent xenophobia in many humans. Due to that, they largely stayed in their original settlements in the equatorial band of desert, though there were minorities in more cosmopolitan Jefferson and distant Akatsuki in the southern hemisphere. By all accounts the drell and ethnic Japanese of the latter city got along just fine, with the uniquely Japanese perspective championed by Patricia Hayato largely allowing for their acceptance in day-to-day life.

_Maybe it will help when the first drell start going through their terms of National Service,_ she decided, so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice when little Fred followed her gaze and walked away to talk to the drell boy. Up until now they had been busy establishing themselves in the land they had been granted. She was finally stirred from her reverie when her father caught her eye and waved her over.

"Janet," Frederick Lefarge greeted her as she approached. "I'm glad you could make it. I wasn't sure the invite would reach you out there." He gestured toward the sky.

"No, I got it, Dad," she replied, bending down to where her father sat and giving her father a warm but gentle hug; he felt startlingly fragile in her arms. "I had some free time. It's good to see you too. How's Mom doing?"

"As well as she can be with those terrors tearing up the landscape," Frederick replied with a smile. He glanced over towards where her mother was setting out drinks and other food that had already been prepared on the buffet-style table. Cindy Guzman Lefarge had Anglo-Mayan looks, olive skin and greenish hazel eyes, though her hair had turned gray from the dark red it had been in her youth. She looked over and smiled at them, then turned her attention to the two twin boys that had run over from the football game, wiping dirt from their faces and sending them inside to wash before grabbing any of the food.

Janet shook her head. It still seemed a bit unnatural how her parents had managed to give her and Iris a much younger pair of brothers – the family seemed to run to twins – and little Frederick a pair of uncles around the same age he was. But medical technology from Citadel Space and a sense of duty in bolstering the number of humans had allowed it to happen.

"Janet." She turned her attention back to her father as he gestured to the drell man standing nearby she had seen him talking to earlier. "This is Lodan, governor of New Rakhana down south. Lodan, allow me to introduce my daughter, Janet."

"A pleasure to meet you, Janet," the drell said with the signature drell reverb quality to his voice, inclining his head politely and extending a hand. His coloring was a bluish-orange, though he was wearing a startlingly human outfit of a button-down shirt and slacks.

"And you," Janet replied as she shook the offered hand. It was an odd feeling with the two fused middle digits on the hand, effectively giving him four fingers.

"I was just speaking to your father about the possibility of his support in pushing for my people to serve in the Naval Forces and Marines," the drell said. "We're eternally grateful for Samothrace's assistance to us in our time of need, and we want to repay the debt we feel we owe our benefactors."

Janet blinked at the fulsome sincerity in his voice, a bit taken aback. She glanced aside at her father to see him smiling, not just in pleasure but in seeing the choice he had made vindicated, at least on the drells' side. Still, it faded slightly as he began to speak. "I'd love to, Lodan, but you know I'm not popular in certain quarters in Jefferson these days. I can talk to some people, but-"

At that point Janet stopped listening, because she caught sight of the official reason she had attended the gathering waving to her near the back door to the ranch house. Frederick noticed her distraction and followed her gaze to see his old friend Johnathan Winters. When Janet turned back to excuse herself, her father merely smiled sadly and nodded before she could get a word out.

Janet felt herself flush slightly with embarrassment as she returned the nod and headed for the house, both for being caught out at still being on the job, and at how easily her father had seen through the ruse. She had never explicitly stated that she was doing work for the Strategic Studies Institute, but her parents – especially her father – hadn't taken long to put the pieces together. Her sister Iris, a more innocent soul, was still oblivious.

Winters chuckled when she mentioned her father's response as they made their way to the living room and sat across the low table from each other. "Can't sneak nothin' past an old OSS hound like him, lass," he remarked. He leaned back against the cushions of the couch and propped one leg up on the opposite knee, a sign that he was getting down to the business they were there for. "I've looked over that data ye gave me."

Janet nodded, leaning back in the armchair and leaning an elbow on the rest. The information she had gotten from Matriarch Besirea on the Citadel had gone straight to the Analysis Department of the Institute.

"Looks like ye'll be takin' another trip, Janet," Winters continued apologetically. "The SSI never sleeps." He held reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a folded slip of paper before holding it out across the table. "Ye'll be havin' some company on this one."

Janet took the slip wordlessly, unfolding it and giving it a quick read through before sliding it into her own jacket's inner pocket. The advantage of paper was that it could be quickly destroyed if an agent's position was compromised, as opposed to the datapads and computers that the greater galaxy was so fond of. _Location, date, and a team of SSI special operations agents._ _Sounds like fun,_ she thought sardonically. More information would be provided closer to the target, of course; she didn't need to know until then.

"Got it. Is that all, then, Uncle John?" At the Englishman's nod, she smiled wanly and stood. "Guess I'll go grab a beer and a hot dog then. Might as well get a semi-decent meal." They shared a rueful chuckle as she left with a small wave.

As she stepped back outside, she could see that plates of finished meats were being set on the table. Before she could head over, though, her father caught her eye. "Everything okay with Jock, Jannie?" he asked, his expression neutral.

Janet hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, everything's fine, Dad. Just going to be heading off-planet again soon."

Frederick gave his daughter a sad smile as he nodded in understanding, then looked over as he heard a bunch of children yelling. Janet looked over in time to see little Fred running alongside to drell boy, who was holding the football in both hands and sprinting for the endzone with long strides. Another boy closed in on the runner on an intercept course, but was tackled out of the way by her nephew before he could get near him.

The drell reached the endzone and grinned as his team mates cheered. Little Freddie got up from the ground and ran over, wrapping an arm around the alien child's shoulders and cheering loudly.

Janet and her father each caught the other's eye and exchanged a smile. "Maybe there's hope for us yet," Frederick Lefarge remarked.

Janet placed a hand on her dad's arm and looked back at the two boys of different races celebrating together. "I hope so, Dad." _And it's my job to make sure they _have_ a future._

* * *

Mass Effect Notes: Bestat is Elysium


	22. Chapter 22

I thank everyone for following this story and please review! They are what are keeping me writing and this story going.

* * *

**TUNTAU**

**PHOENIX SYSTEM**

**ARGOS RHO CLUSTER**

**ATTICAN TRAVERSE**

**MAY 9, 2014**

Luther Tull stepped through the kinetic barrier that separated the hostile atmosphere on the outside of the vehicle from its safely pressurized interior. He grimaced behind the mask of his pressurized helmet as he unclipped the Holbars T-8 assault rifle from his armor; it was a virtually featureless rectangular box now, but a buttplate, pistol grip and stubby telescopic sight unfolded when he tapped a button, while a barrel and a thinner rod sprouted from the front. _Damn volus knockoffs._ It was bad enough that he and the stick of ghouloons he had with him had to use a turian-designed APC, but the volus had managed to make it even seemingly more confined and ergonomically unpleasant. _Course, it could just be the size of these boys here,_ he thought as he looked at the four large shapes in black armor and helmets shaped for their muzzles, milling around slightly after the cramped ride and hooting softly to each other as they looked around, their own SAW-4 light machine guns already held easily in their bulky arms.

His eyes became hooded as he contemplated the avian race that was one of the triumvirate of species that made up the Citadel Council. He had seen a lot of friends die on Vritra 2 during the Turian War. _All 'cause we tried to open an unmapped mass relay. An' they call us Draka trigger happy._ While the Turian Hierarchy had been forced by the Council to pay reparations to the Domination it was, to Luther's mind, not nearly enough. _Now they've up and gotten friendly with the Yankees too._ It was proof to him that the turians were implacable enemies to the Draka, ones who needed to be shown their place.

After the Turian War he and most of the other survivors of the original Vritra 2 colonial force had been sent back to Earth for anti-partisan tours in eastern North America after a debriefing and some leave. Officially there hadn't been any censure, and they had been told unofficially that their experience as holdouts against the turian occupation force would provide a unique perspective in hunting the Yankee bushmen. But there had still been the sense, though, that they had been exiled to one of the roughest active sectors in the New Territories. They'd had no trouble taking out their anger and frustration on the local population. _Bad timing for those holdouts to launch that attack on the Security Directorate HQ in Lynchburg._ Luther and the others had overseen the impaling of the remaining population of the city along the sides of US Route 501 in reprisal, lining them up towards the Blue Ridge Mountains where the bushmen in the region were based.

Then the Council had mediated the expulsion of most of the surviving civilian population from Earth to Samothrace and there had been scarcely anyone to hit back against for the outrages committed by the bushmen. The idea of using biobombs had been floated, but it was deemed too risky with the Council keeping an eye on the Domination. So the particularly difficult spots of North America – the Appalachians, the Sierra Madres, the Rockies, the Northwestern and Yukon Territories, and Alaska – had been turned into Reserves where the War Directorate's forces could keep sharp, and for the occasional Citizen who wanted game more exciting than any on four legs could book a hunting tour.

After some killsweeps through the Adirondacks and the Laurentian Mountains during his final tour where he had earned the Anti-Partisan Cross, Luther had finally been pulled from that gods forsaken continent of radioactive ruins, empty towns, and hostile mountains. That was when the Intelligence Section had contacted him.

Some grit blew into the visor of his helmet and the drakensis turned away from the blowing wind, taking a moment to look around. Tuntau was a forever overcast planet with a thick atmosphere of methane and helium. The ground was mostly oddly blue salt flats scattered with silicon dioxide. "Or sand as we regular folk like to call it," he muttered as he nudged some around with the toe of his armor.

Off to the south was an odd pyramid, most of it constructed of some grayish material while the tip was made of some jet black metal. _Prothean, most likely. Any artifacts have prob'ly been looted a long time ago._ He wondered briefly why the batarians had chosen this spot, then shrugged. _Likely 'cause it's the only landmark this hunk of rock has,_ he thought as he turned to the ghouloons and whistled sharply through the headset built into his armor to get their attention. When they looked over, he pointed to the pyramid, saying, "I want one of y'all up theah to keep a lookout. Stay in radio contact." One of them brought a fist to his chest in salute and collapsed his machine gun, clipping it onto the back of his armor before falling to all fours and sprinting for the alien structure.

With things quiet for the moment, Luther let his mind wander as his eyes tracked the surrounding landscape automatically for threats, skills learned in Basic Training and honed to a knife edge on Vritra 2 and in North America. His drakensis mind could handle the requisite multitasking; they had been bred for intelligence, memory, and mental applications, though they had lost true creativity in the process.

His mouth quirked as he recalled the latest scandal to hit Citizen society back on Earth. Covington Coemer, Arch-Strategos and hero of the Eurasian War alongside Eric von Shrakenberg – who, indeed, had served under him in the same unit – had died a few years ago and had had his book, _The Big Lie_, posthumously published. In it he tore into the 'illusions' and 'assumptions' of Draka society, as well as the sparkling image of his former commanding officer. The Security Directorate, who monitored all published literature, had eventually let it be published not long ago, if only to tarnish the heretofore immaculate legend of the Archon who had won the Sol and Turian Wars.

Views about the aim and truthfulness of the book had been mixed, especially since Coemer tore his own image asunder as much as von Shrakenberg's, the Domination's, and even the drakensis'. _I especially like how the cantankerous old bastard calls us mutants no closer to human than chimpanzees, _he thought with a soft chuckle. Many had reached the conclusion that it was a farcical work with the aim of puncturing the self-importance of a Domination riding too high on victory disease after defeating the Alliance for Democracy and winning their first encounter with an alien race. _I suppose he figured it was the last service he could do for the State and the Race._ Though there were unsettling points made in the late Arch-Strategos' account, they were largely ignored when placed against appreciation for the majority interpretation of the work as a whole.

"Sir." Over the headset in a blurred and gravelly but understandable tone: the ghouloon lookout. "Rover approaching. Northeast."

Luther turned his head and peered in that direction, his acute eyesight just making out the raising of dust. "Acknowledged," he replied. "Jus' stay up there fo' now. The rest of you, stay sharp." He did another scan of their surroundings, scanning the horizon for other vehicles. Seeing nothing, he looked back towards the approaching dust plume and waited stolidly.

* * *

Perched a ledge of dark rock covered with a thick layer of sand a little under a mile away, Janet Lefarge watched the Draka squad through the scope mounted atop her new Springfield-20 assault rifle. The New Springfield Armory was just starting to get production of domestic weaponry underway, trying to wean Samothrace off of the turian arms they had been purchasing for the past decade. The rest of her squad were armed with Haliat Armory small arms, one of the smaller turian manufacturers that had been given permission by the Hierarchy to sell excess units on the galactic market. They were basic weapons, but sound and of high quality.

There were a dozen of them, including her; eleven humans and one drell. She had been surprised by the presence of the non-human – _Can't really call him an alien, living on the same planet and all_ – but it had faded quickly. The Institute didn't operate by the same rules as the regular military, and he had kept up with the rest of them when they had left their rovers on the other side of the mountain and climbed over it for a good vantage point on this meeting, especially as the gravity was slightly heavier than the Terran norm.

She was laying on her stomach, only the rifle and the top of her head visible over the ledge. All of them were trained in fieldcraft for a variety of environments and they had a box of very sophisticated electronics with them to avoid detection.

"I count four ghouloons and one humanoid, probably drakensis," one of the two snipers said over her headset. "One on the pyramid, rest waiting down below."

"Ignore the one on the pyramid," she responded. The ghouloons all looked to be armed with light machine guns, not a credible threat at this range, and that one was even further away from them than the rest. "Chaiseri, Krios, keep them in your sights."

"Target acquired," the Siamese sniper answered.

"Target acquired," the drell confirmed.

Janet raised her head briefly to catch sight of the dust plume, then peered at it through the scope. Another APC, this one a batarian model. _Six wheeled, no mounted weapons. Probably armored against anything we were able to bring with us. Wish we had something heavier._ Weapons research had shown that heavy infantry weapons designs brought with them from Sol, like a pazooka or bomblet launcher, were useless against composite materials formed in ultra dense mass effect fields. And heavier infantry arms had been one thing the Hierarchy _hadn't_ been willing to sell them; their military held its technological secrets very close, infantry weapons were too easy to reproduce, and they didn't want them getting into the hands of the galaxy's ubiquitous mercenary and pirate bands.

It was a bit of an insulting estimation of Samothrace's security. _But if they were looking at the history of how often the Snakes' Krypteia people got their hands on our technology before the Fall, I suppose it makes sense._ Samothrace had learned the lessons of the old USA and Alliance for Democracy well, but they would have to prove themselves before the turians would trust their procedures. _In the mean time, it means the Armory and the Institute's R&D Department have to develop heavier weapons all on their own._

She swept the scope back towards the Draka party, observed how they were watching the approaching APC, then swept back to the vehicle. "Hold fire until my signal." _We know the Snakes and the batarians are working together. What's this meeting about?_

* * *

Luther Tull watched as the other APC approached. Soon he could hear the whine of its engine and the crunching of its tires over the rough, uneven terrain. Once it had come within thirty meters, Luther up his hand, palm forward, and the vehicle rolled to a stop. A few seconds later a humanoid figure emerged and approached as six others began getting out of the back compartment.

The lead figure stopped about ten meters away. "You're Tull?"

Luther inclined his head. "Luther Tull, Tetrarch, VIII Airmobile, Reconnaissance," he said in his people's etiquette upon meeting another for the first time: Name, rank, and occupation.

The batarian tilted his head to the left in his species' gesture of respect. "Tarak Ful'dah, SIU."

Luther raised an eyebrow behind the mask of his helmet. _Batarian special forces. I guess when you care enough you send the very best._ The Hegemony's Special Intervention Unit had a notorious reputation across Council Space and beyond. Their training program was supposed to be brutal, with a high fatality rate.

He looked the armored figure over, sizing him up, but couldn't see as much as he'd like, both due to the concealing suit and a lack of involuntary movements. _Not bad. Wouldn't mind seein' him or another of these SIU boys in action though._ The batarians made useful allies, but he was yet to see one that was personally formidable.

The other six began making their way over from the batarian APC as the SIU man, Tarak, continued speaking. "My superiors say that the Attican Traverse is becoming too dangerous as a conduit. The turians and the damned humans are putting too many hulls out here. There's too much of a chance of one of them stumbling over us." The batarian's voice had a flat quality to it, that of someone reciting something.

Luther shrugged his shoulders. "My people aren't afraid of fightin' off a stray frigate. That happens, then we move on to other routes."

A low chuckle from the batarian. _Wotan, it _is_ alive_, the drakensis thought.

"Fair enough," the batarian said, his voice still flat but holding a bit more animation. "My superiors don't want to push the Council too far, though. If a human ship disappears it's not a big deal. But if a turian ship does... They don't like leaving their dead lying around. They take their bodies back to their homeworld, Palaven, for their spirits to be commended to their legion."

Luther knew it was a translation of the native turian, but he was struck by the irony of having a foe whose military units sounded similar to the Domination's. _Never thought there'd be anyone who took their military even more seriously than we do._ The turians' entire culture revolved around duty to their Hierarchy. _We may say 'Service to the State', but at least our Citizens are allowed more personal freedom._ He thought of the long time ago he'd last had leave, or of the variations of the military uniform he was obliged to wear most of the time._ Or mostly, anyway._

"Their ships check in regularly too," Tarak continued. "If one of them falls out of contact, a fleet converges on the area in short order."

"That's all by the way," Luther replied dismissively. "We're willin' to deal with that once it actually happens." A grin stretched across his face within his helmet. "I, fo' one, wouldn't mind havin' another go with them."

The batarian shook his head. "I like your attitude, but-"

"Sir." A choked gravelly voice, with the distinct sound of hissing in the background. "Can't breath-" The transmission cut off abruptly with a spurt of static.

Luther's head turned sharply towards the pyramid. _That was the lookout!_ "Intruder!" he snarled, enraged at the effrontery of someone trying to sneak up on _him!_ "Get them under cover!" He raised his Holbars, bracing the buttplate against his shoulder and sighting through the scope as Tarak shouted at the six from the back of his APC and began hurrying them towards the Drakas'.

* * *

"Shit!" Janet watched as the scene of the meeting suddenly exploded into action through her scope. "Something's spooked them." A split second of thought at the sudden development, then decision crystallized. "Open fire. Take out all the armed ones and try and try to disable the vehicles. The rest of you, follow me." Hopefully they'd be able to salvage something from this after searching the bodies.

The two snipers opened fire, pulling their triggers with smooth, even pressure as the rest of them began a hurried but controlled descent down the slope.

* * *

Luther was scanning the pinnacle of the Prothean pyramid through the scope of his assault rifle when he felt the first shudder of his kinetic shields as they shed incoming fire. In the next instant he heard the distant report of the gunshot. "Sniper!" he yelled. _But it didn't come from the pyramid. It came from the mountains!_ "Ambush!"

_We've been sold out._ He wasn't sure how or why, but somebody somehow had discovered this meeting and laid down a trap.

"Absolutely imperative you follow this directive should the operation be compromised." That's what the Intelligence Section officer had said. _What a fuckin' waste,_ he thought as he fell to one knee and swung his rifle around, aiming at the six still rushing for his APC and cutting five of them down with controlled bursts, aiming automatically for head shots. They were wearing enviro-suits instead of armor, with no armor or shields to get in the way.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he looked around from the sight of the falling bodies. Tarak and the other batarian had their assault rifles unclipped as they dove for the ground. The shields around his stick of ghouloons were shimmering as they roared defiance, panning their machine guns around for the unseen enemies. The shields around one of them failed as he watched, and high-powered rounds punched through his helmet, sending sprays of escaping air and liquid crimson rushing out as the large figure toppled.

"Git _down,_ damn it!" he shouted as he rolled to the dirt behind a rise of sand, dropping his assault rifle next to him and unclipping his sniper rifle. He scanned the mountains as it unfolded, his acute eyes catching sight of the distant movement descending the slope as sniper fire stitched into the sand in front of him.

His lips peeled back from his teeth in a hunter's grin as he brought the scope of the sniper rifle to his eye, bracing the buttplate against his shoulder and resting the barrel on the rise of sand in front of him. _Account for the wind, lead the target._ He held a breath, aimed, and _Bam!_ and recoil hammered at his shoulder. A savage surge of satisfaction as the kinetic shields around one of the oncoming armored humanoids – asari? human? batarian? – flared and died and _Bam!_ and the same one fell to tumble down the slope in a fall that would break bones and rupture internal organs.

* * *

Janet skidded down on her heels and backside for a particularly steep stretch down the mountain. She started to regain her feet at an increase in the grade of the slope, that turned into a controlled roll the last few feet to another ledge as the shields of the SSI trooper next to her died, the next one sending him tumbling uncontrolled down the mountain.

"Fuck," she growled. "God _damn,_" she swore again as another trooper caught a sniper round right in the visor of her helmet as she tried to take cover on the ledge next to her. _Whoever's doing the shooting is good._

She leopard-crawled to the edge and brought the scope of her S20 rifle to her eye. Most of them were down, including one of the ghouloons. The other two had taken cover behind the Draka APC, while the three live humanoids had hit the dirt behind sand drifts. All three were set up with sniper rifles, tracking and firing at the onrushing squad.

"Everyone, take cover! Chaiseri, Krios, can you get a bead on them?"

"Negative," Chaiseri responded. "The winds are gusting and they're well placed."

Response from the drell was delayed as he obviously puzzled over the human idiom before grasping it from context. "I may be able to, but I cannot guarantee success."

"Give it your best shot, then," Janet responded, her mouth stretching into a tight smile at the current literalness of another idiom.

* * *

Luther continued his aimed firing, pumping round after round into the oncoming would-be ambushers before they suddenly went to ground, taking cover. He tracked the scope back and forth.

"C'mon, show me yo' pretty faces, yo' sumbitches," he murmured.

"Tull," Tarak called over the headset. "We can't stay out here forever. Your APC is the closest. We should make a break for it."

For a moment Luther felt disbelief and a stirring of anger and disdain at the very suggestion of leaving the battle, then consciously calmed his body's physical reactions to the combat that were distorting his higher thought processes. _The Will is Master,_ he reminded himself.

A strange wet sound through his headset, and Tarak yelled, "Groto? Groto!" A cursory look from his position towards that of the other batarian. "He's down. Curved shot to the side of the head."

Luther blinked surprise, looking back towards the distant mountains. _White Christ, that was a hell of a shot._ Close to a mile, gusting winds, curved _using_ the wind around the sand bank into an estimated position of where the batarian SIU trooper was. Whoever had made it was more than just good; they were _gifted._ Not the sort of person you wanted to be on the wrong end of the scope from.

Another shot rang out and Luther felt his kinetic shields die under the impact. He started to duck down lower with a curse when he realized that this one had come from a different direction, from the pyramid. _Almost forgot about that one,_ he thought as he scrambled for cover.

"Alright, Tarak, I'm convinced. Boys, suppressin' fire on the pyramid!" He pulled out the depleted power pack for the shields and began switching a new one from a compartment on his armor as the two ghouloons aimed their SAWs at the pyramid and let loose with a barrage of automatic fire. He grabbed his assault rifle and clipped it back to his armor as he watched the power level readout climb until the kinetic shields reformed around him with a sound felt more through the armor than heard. "Right. Alright, Tarak, mind in gear, arse to rear. Let's _do_ it, let's _go_."

The drakensis and the batarian popped to the their feet and began running for the APC. Luther _bounced_ forward, not bothering to come to his feet, flinging himself up with a flexing of long arms and legs, then hit the ground with legs pumping and body almost horizontal, moving like a broken-field runner. The batarian was slower, but extremely fast for a species not as extensively gene-engineered as the Draka Citizens.

Luther reached the APC first and took cover behind it near the ghouloons. He quickly turned and aimed his sniper rifle at the oncoming ambushers on the mountain, firing at them to keep them down while Tarak finished closing the distance to the vehicle, hurdling the bodies near it.

"In, in!" he shouted, slapping the batarian's armored back as he passed by. He fired a last few shots at the enemy troops then turned and ducked into the APC, followed closely by the two surviving ghouloons.

Luther fell into a seat as he collapsed his sniper rifle and clipped it back to his armor, reaching up and pulling his helmet off as the APC rumbled away from the meeting site. "Well, _that_ was a fuckin' fiasco," he remarked.

The SIU trooper shrugged as he set his own helmet aside, his four-eyed face a mass of scars, looking far _tougher_ than any batarian Luther had seen before. _Not sure what all exactly goes into that SIU training, but it seems to have somethin' to it._

"It happened, it's done," he replied, his voice flat. "Now we report to our superiors and see what's to be done next."

The drakensis smiled thinly. _At least he ain't sayin' 'I told you so'._ "Sho' thing. An' maybe we'll find out who was behind this." His hand clenched into a fist. "I'm buildin' a powerful dislike fo' them."

* * *

Janet began to slow the steady trot that ate distance as she and the three other SSI troopers neared the meeting site. _Five dead,_ she thought coldly. The other two survivors had been sent around to an easier, more visible path around the mountain to bring the rovers back, while the snipers were making their way to the meeting site behind them.

The other five had been taken down by the steady, meticulous sniper fire from the Snakes and batarians. She shook her head briefly. _Keep your mind clear, Lefarge,_ she told herself, though she heard the words in the voice of her drill instructor from Basic. _We always knew the price going into this business._

Movement ahead drew her attention. She snapped her Springfield-20 to the ready as she caught sight of a tall, slim figure with a tall, strangely shaped helmet approaching the bodies lined up near where the Draka APC had been. _Too small for a ghouloon, not a humanoid like a drakensis or a batarian..._ "Identify yourself!" she shouted as the other three troopers also trained their assault rifles on the stranger.

The armored figure turned at the voice, an assault rifle held casually at his side in one hand. "Dublo Flemin, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Are you mercenaries, or are you Samothracian?"

Janet blinked behind her visor, feeling a chill run over her skin. The Special Tactics and Recon branch were an elite group of agents – Spectres, for short – that answered directly to the Council itself. Highly trained individuals authorized to act above and outside the law, the Spectres had one simple mandate: protect galactic stability at any and all costs. _But what's one of them doing here?_ she wondered as she gathered herself.

"How do you know we're either of those?" she asked neutrally, though she lowered the barrel of her assault rifle slightly.

"Deduction," the Spectre replied. "Too well armed for pirates or slavers. Tuntau is a popular location for small ships traveling through this cluster to land for a drive discharge, perfect targets for mercenary bands looking for an easy score. Otherwise, must be Samothracian. Meeting made up of drakensis and batarians, both of which would logically attract the attention of Samothracian Intelligence. If the latter, we may have much to discuss. If the former, will have to kill you."

Janet noticed the other three troopers exchanging glances; she could practically read their minds. _One guy is going to kill all of us?_ But she had done extensive research on the various law enforcement and military branches of the Citadel. _He may just be able to do it,_ she thought as she examined the salarian, then nodded in decision and straightened, lowering her rifle.

"Janet Lefarge, Strategic Studies Institute." No use in lying, and the Council would be upset if Samothrace didn't cooperate with one of their Spectres.

The Spectre, Dublo, nodded in acknowledgment and turned back to the bodies, approaching them without another word. Irked, Janet trotted after him and was surprised when one of the 'dead' bodies suddenly moved. She snapped her rifle back up and noticed that the salarian had been a beat faster than her.

"Wait, don't shoot!" A female voice, sounding desperate as she threw one hand in the air as she used to other to help herself to her feet. Two holes through the helmet showed blue skin and a brown eye. There was a faint shimmering just behind the holes.

* * *

_Asari maiden,_ Dublo deduced as he took in the tone of the voice and the extensive facial markings that were the traditional mark of one of the monogendered race in the youngest of the three life stages. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"I'm just a merc, I thought I was helping to escort a shipment of slaves!" She cringed as the four humans behind him suddenly tensed. Dublo held up a hand briefly to stop them from doing anything rash. _Humans have bad history with slavers,_ he reminded himself.

The Spectre moved forward to flip some of the bodies onto their backs. _Three asari, two salarians and a turian in all,_ he noted. "Slaves?" he pressed.

"Yeah! Except that those damned batarians turned on me when we passed through the relay." Her voice was bitter. "And I didn't expect to get shot at either. Please! You have to get me into a pressurized environment! The bullets just missed me through my helmet, and I played dead while I used my biotics to plug the leaks!" She was obviously sagging at the effort of maintaining a field for so long.

Dublo noted the nearby APC the batarians had abandoned in their rush to escape. _Possibly pressurized, possibly not. Batarians not known for installing luxuries for military forces._ He turned his attention back to the asari. "I'm going to need more information first." As she began to protest, he continued: "The faster you give me information, the faster you can get into a safe environment." He waited for her tired, reluctant nod. "Now... were they selling these slaves to the Draka?"

"I didn't know who we were coming to meet until we got here," she replied, her voice losing its former hysterical note. "They just said they were going to hand us over to them. I didn't know much about the rest of them. I didn't see them until after we landed, and the batarians didn't let us talk to each other."

Dublo frowned. _Not much information to go on._ The slaving had been an assumption of hers; from what she was saying they could have just as easily been handing over criminals to the Domination for prosecution. _Unusual that it would be in a clandestine meeting, but the Council will need more concrete information than that before they will antagonize the Domination and the Hegemony._

"Anything else? Any other information you might have seen? Or heard?" he pressed.

"Please," the asari pleaded, slumping noticeably now. "An environment... I'm so tired..."

"Only after you give me information," he replied, then rushed forward as the asari suddenly slumped to the ground. He dropped his assault rifle and brought a hand to the back of her head, raising it so that he could look into her eyes. "Quickly! Was there anything else you heard?"

"I..." The asari was muddled from exhaustion, taking a moment to process the words. "They were going somewhere else... after this..."

"Where?"

Her eye met his through his visor, speaking one word before her biotic field finally collapsed: "Omega_._"


	23. Chapter 23

Janet Lefarge watched the salarian Spectre as he stood in front of the dead asari mercenary, staring down at her silently with his arms folded just above his stomach in the indentation of his chest. He was large for one of his species, above average in height for an already tall race and thicker in body and limbs. He had been standing there for the past few minutes, ever since the young asari had died in his arms and he had laid her back onto the ground. Behind them the other SSI troopers were picking through the other bodies for information and equipment, especially those of the dead batarian and the ghouloon.

_Can't say _I_ feel much sympathy for someone who was okay with being a slaver,_ she thought. Still, he had been the one doing the interrogating. "The batarian APC didn't have a pressurized crew compartment anyway," she offered to the Spectre. "Even if it had, any additional information was important. You don't have anything to be sorry about."

Dublo looked up as Janet started to speak, then shook his head as she finished. "No, it is not remorse I'm contemplating. I did need that information, and she is far from the first intelligent being that has died at my hands."

Janet started to reply, then shrugged inwardly. _Fair enough. _A frown. _Not the first being to die..._ "By the way," she began, "there was a ghouloon on that pyramid. I'm guessing you had something to do with that?" She waited for his nod, then continued: "No offense, but how did you neutralize it? Those things don't go down easy."

"Ah, simple enough. Design flaw in the armor." After a small stretch of silence, the salarian detected that she was looking for a more detailed answer. "Hose connecting the helmet to the power pack on the armor's back was exposed, vulnerable. Sloppy work." He frowned behind his helmet. "I tried jamming it's outgoing transmissions to prevent the others being alerted, but they utilized more bandwidth than I anticipated." A sniff. "Grossly overpowered, unrefined."

The Spectre looked over abruptly as Janet laughed softly; she held up a placating hand. "Sorry, but you just described the Draka basic philosophy. 'Brute force and massive ignorance'. The Snakes – sorry, drakensis – like to bludgeon problems to death by preference." She nodded to the dead ghouloon nearby. "Those were bred to be their Janissaries, slave-soldiers. They give them mass produced equipment just good enough for field service and use them as a battle-axe for campaigns of attrition. They did the same back when all their slaves were human."

Dublo considered the nuances of the statement a moment, then replied: "You say their slaves – serfs, they call them? - were human. Weren't the Draka human as well?"

Janet scowled. "Barely," she said shortly. "They were slavers, mass murderers, and degenerates. But they didn't _want_ to be human. They always saw themselves as something above everyone else, and they told themselves that it justified enslaving every other human. When they were done murdering thousands of slaves in experiments to crack the human genome – another of their brute force methods – they created their New Race, the drakensis."

Dublo was silent a moment as his mind quickly processed the information. "Strange," he concluded. "You and the Draka were the same species. For them to come to such a radically different philosophy must have required several differing factors – societal, environmental, economic."

Janet shook her head. "Our people examined that from the end of the Eurasian War right up until the Fall and the Exodus; it doesn't matter much anymore, now that it's been hardwired into the drakensis. One of their people wrote a social history back in 1983, on the 200th anniversary of their foundation as a colony, a guy named Sorensson. He tried to explain how the ideology of their Domination and their Citizens came about. You can look at that if you're really interested."

"Intriguing. Perhaps I will."

Janet looked over as two armored figures came trotting up. "Excuse me," she said to the salarian as she turned towards the two SSI snipers and walked over.

"Ma'am," they said in unison, giving a brief salute.

"At ease," she ordered, waving off the salutes casually. "We don't do that in the field." _Can't think of a better way to put a bullseye on an officer._

"Yes, ma'am," they chorused. "Sorry, ma'am," the drell added. Standing side by side, they were easy to tell apart despite the concealing armor. Chaiseri was broader through the shoulders, blockier compared to the slighter, more lithe Krios.

Janet turned her attention to the drell, clasping her hands behind her back. "I had a look at that batarian," she commented. "Behind an obstacle, to the side of the head. Damn impressive shot." _Or sheer luck. But I'm sure the Institute didn't take him on for nothing._ "Where'd you learn to shoot?"

Krios – Delin Krios was his full name – glanced aside at the batarian body, then back to his human CO. "I did some fighting back on Rakhana, ma'am," he replied. "I had much experience in the various conflicts we fought over our dwindling food and water supplies."

Janet raised an eyebrow. "And when the Institute approached you, you signed on for more? No retirement?"

The drell shook his head. "I and my family were among the first to be evacuated on the _New America_. I had been escorting my family to take up the offer of the hanar Illuminated Primacy to evacuate us to their ocean planet, Kahje, when the human fleet arrived in orbit and announced their arrival to assist us." He paused for a while, looking back across the years to that desperate time and reliving his memories with brutal clarity due to his species' eidetic memory. "They were... less intimidating than the hanar," he continued at last. "They were so alien to so many drell that many sought to brave their chaotic but familiar surroundings rather than to entrust their lives to such alien beings.

"But your people were far less alien, they were shaped as we are and they spoke with sounds instead of bioluminescence. And they offered land much like our home, the equatorial desert of Samothrace." A pause, and she could hear the smile hidden behind his helmet as he continued: "I changed direction from there, to the nearest evacuation center under human control."

He straightened and looked at Janet levelly. "The United Systems of Samothrace saved the lives of my family and myself. I seek to repay the debt I owe, and to defend my nation against the Draka and the Hegemony."

_Another drell looking to repay the 'debt' they owe us,_ Janet thought. _I wonder if the drell the hanar picked up feel the same way._ She made a mental note to check on that when she had a spare moment as she nodded to Krios and Chaiseri and turned away to check on the Spectre.

He was crouched next to the body of the ghouloon when she looked, looking over the SAW-4 light machine gun it had been carrying, then looking back at the body to examine the hands at the end of all four limbs. He glanced over briefly as she approached, then went back to his examination.

"I have not had much experience with the Domination's forces before this," Dublo stated, gesturing to the body and equipment before him. "Non-governmental organizations, mostly. Terrorists, pirates, slavers. Occasional infiltration for data." He got back to his feet, brushing sand off of his hands. "The ghouloons appear to be a robust species, and its equipment simple but sturdy." A pause. "The drakensis was... startling," he admitted. "I had heard of their physical abilities, but..."

"It's something else to see it with your own eyes, right?" The salarian nodded reluctant agreement to Janet's statement. She glanced over at the asari mercenary's body. "She said they were going somewhere else after this. Some place called Omega." She looked back at him. "I've heard references to it before, that it's in the Terminus Systems. What is it exactly?"

Dublo looked at her in surprise a moment, then shook his head as he reminded himself aloud, "I forget that your people emerged into the greater galaxy little more than a decade ago." He started to pace as he continued: "It is a large space station mined out of an asteroid located deep in the Terminus Systems. It serves as an economic hub for various minor species that refuse to recognize the authority of the Council or adhere to the Citadel Conventions, though most of its trade is illicit. Omega itself is lawless, what authority there is provided by gangs, mercenary groups and crime syndicates that control limited territories on the station.

"My people call it 'place of secrets', the asari name translates as 'heart of evil', the turians call it 'world without law', and the krogan refer to it as 'land of opportunity'." He stopped his pacing abruptly and looked at her. "What does the human name for it mean?"

Janet didn't hear him for a moment, still struck by the krogan name for what sounded like a lawless hive of criminals and various other scum. _'Land of opportunity'?_ she thought with a touch of pique. _It hardly sounds like the America I was born in._

She refocused her attention back to him, going back over what part of her had heard while she had been distracted. "Omega?" She searched her memory for a few moments, then replied, "It's the last letter of the Greek alphabet. It basically means 'the end of all things'." _Whoever worked on adding English to the galaxy's translators chose a fitting enough name._ A disquieting thought occurred to her a moment later: _Unless it was the Snakes adding their 'Talk' to the translators._ It was _Classical_ Greek, after all.

"Interesting," Dublo said, disrupting her thoughts. He started pacing again for a few moments, then looked at her abruptly again. "I'm not quite sure what the Domination and the Hegemony are up to, or even if it is a threat to galactic peace. But there is too much I don't know about this incident. I plan on pursuing this.

"Time is of the essence in such an active situation, however," he continued, "and stopping to request assistance from the Council would take far too long. I normally work alone, but the opposing forces are formidable as I have seen. You possess a firsthand knowledge of the Draka that could prove invaluable, and you appear to be adequately trained. I would like you to accompany me directly to Omega."

Janet blinked behind the visor of her helmet. _Me? Work with a Spectre?_ Vids portraying them as super-agents saving the entire galaxy from dire threats had been among those films from abroad that had become popular on Samothrace. She had never been the type with romantic notions of what intelligence work consisted of, or that the enemy and his plans could be taken down in one fell swoop.

_But to work with one of the Council's elite agents. And against the Snakes..._ She smiled slowly behind her helmet. _Uncle John won't mind if I help expose some Draka nastiness to the Council._

"Alright," she said. "I'll travel with you." After noting his nod, she turned to the rest of her team and began issuing orders as their two rovers came driving up to the site. _I'll need all the rations, ammo, some spare weapons and power packs..._ No human had ever set foot on Omega, and they were considered a relatively minor species by the greater galaxy due to their low numbers anyway. She would have to be self-reliant for the foreseeable future and, failing that, find ways to adapt.

"Report back to the Institute and relay all the intel we've gathered, as well as my status," she ordered the remaining six people on her squad. She picked up the pack of supplies with a sharp exhale of breath and slid the straps over her shoulders.

"Ma'am." Krios stepped forward. "Are you sure that you do not need back up?"

Janet considered a moment, then glanced briefly over where the Spectre was standing near the batarian APC. "I don't think this is the sort of trip where I can just invite anyone along," she remarked dryly. "Besides, you have a family waiting at home." _While I'm nearly middle aged, childless and barely see my family anyway,_ she thought without envy or self-pity; it was simple fact. _Samothrace isn't going to fall on account of the loss of one Janet Mary Lefarge._

Krios nodded briefly, paused a moment, then straightened to attention and saluted crisply. "I hope to serve with you again in the future, ma'am." There were murmurs of agreement from the others, and they each drew themselves up and saluted alongside him.

Janet stared at them for a long moment, then shook her head briefly before drawing herself up in turn and returning their salute. "Thanks," she said gruffly. "Now get out of here already. They need that intel back home." Without another word, she turned away from them and strode toward the batarian APC where the salarian Spectre was waiting for her.

_I never was good with 'feelings',_ she thought. _I'm just doing my duty._ A grin. _Even if it means I get to go where no human has gone before and stomp a few Snakes along the way._

* * *

**OMEGA**

**SAHRABARIK SYSTEM**

**OMEGA NEBULA**

**TERMINUS SYSTEMS**

**MAY 12, 2014**

Luther Tull's nose wrinkled as he walked along the corridor leading away from one of Omega's many landing ports with Tarak and the two ghouloons walking with him. It was dim, grimy, and the windows along one side provided a view of the rock that made up most of this hollowed out asteroid. The other side was no better: it showed a warren of mostly darkened columnar buildings stretching between the interior space of the asteroid, set alongside stacks spewing open flames due to some industrial process, all viewed through windows of some dingy transparent material.

_By Frey, this place is _ugly! he thought, appalled. Back when most of its industry had been on the Earth's surface, the Domination had always set the Combines' serf-inhabited industrial compounds discreetly out of sight of residential areas, and they didn't construct towering buildings that blocked views. This place was about as far from the comely, well-ordered avenues and gardens of Archona as seemed possible.

He noticed an alien, a batarian, curled up against one of the walls, coughing wetly as he huddled himself into a small ball. A quick glance aside at Tarak spotted his expression twist with contempt before looking away again. "Lower caste trash," the SIU trooper remarked as they walked by.

The corners of Luther's mouth turned downward slightly. The Race had always viewed its Destiny as being the domination of all the Earth, but had also recognized their own responsibility in maintaining their subject races to run the factories and till the fields. No sane Citizen expected work out of a starveling ridden by illness. The batarians, it seemed, had their own ideas about their lower castes and slaves.

As they walked out of an alley onto one of the slightly broader roads, Luther's nose wrinkled again with a sound of distaste made at the back of his throat. Not only was this station ugly, it _stank!_ The mingled odors of a dozen different alien species: sweat and pheromones covered up by the gagging scent of unfamiliar perfumes; the reek of unidentifiable foods wafting from open windows and doors; the putrid stench of uncollected garbage that littered the back alleys. He was so distracted by the odors assailing his nose that he almost missed the sudden attention of some turians lurking in one of the alleys they passed, and the tingling sense of low conversation and movement behind them.

Leaving part of his mind to concentrate on that development, he looked over at Tarak. "So where is this place we're headin'?"

"A few districts over," the batarian replied. "We would have used a closer landing port, but the district it's in is under an... ownership dispute. Some new turian gang, the Primarchs, is trying to carve themselves a place on the station." A pause. "And you want to keep your eyes forward. If you don't watch we're you're going, you might get a blade in the stomach."

Luther let out a disgusted sigh as he looked forward again. "Nothin' but disordered chaos," he muttered, then stopped himself as what his conscious mind had heard cross-checked with what the back part of his mind had been concentrating on. "Turian gang?" he asked sharply.

"Yeah," Tarak replied casually. "I saw them too. They're probably planning on setting up an ambush ahead. Gutsy of them, this is supposed to be an asari district." He glanced back at the two ghouloons. "Not sure why they've chosen us, though. We're in full armor. They usually choose easier targets."

"Hey Draka!" The flanged voice came from behind them, but more turians stepped into the street ahead to block their path. A quick glance behind showed Luther that even more were approaching behind them. The two ghouloons let out low growls.

"That explains it, then," the drakensis commented. Then to the ghouloons: "Easy boys, fo' now." He turned to face the direction the voice had come from, his hand hovering at his side midway between the Jamieson knife at his thigh and the Tolgren pistol at his hip.

_This is a bit like the movies about the State back in the 19th Century, actually, _he thought, which brought a slight smile to his face as one turian took a few steps ahead of the others, his gait and entire manner arrogantly confident. _Some place like the Sudan or West Africa, where all the bushmen had guns and duels between Citizens were mo' common place._

"I knew it was a Snake," the turian remarked, using the derogatory nickname the galaxy had picked up from the Yankees. "I could tell because of those two furry krogan you've got with you. Oh, wait, I've got that wrong! At least krogan know how to form whole sentences." The other turians all squawked out evil laughs. They were all wearing outifts of the same colors and, oddly for turians, the carapace over their faces lacked any of the colorful tattoos that most turians Luther had encountered possessed. They all carried at least a pistol, though only the one who had spoken and a few others wore armor.

The ghouloons practically quivered where they were standing, their bronze-gold slit-pupilled eyes moving to Luther for permission to tear them apart. But the Draka maintained his calm manner, keeping that light smile on his face. "An' who do I have the pleasure of addressin'?" he asked.

There were more laughs from some of the turians at the phrasing. The lead one tilted his head to the side, fixing the drakensis with one avian eye. "I'm Illo, and you're a long way from the Domination, Snake. Did you take a wrong turn somewhere? You're on Omega now, on the Primarchs' turf."

"I thought this was an asari district," Tarak put in.

The leader, Illo, laughed. "Not for long." More laughs echoed from the other turians' surrounding them. He took a couple of steps forward, pulling a shotgun from the small of his back and holding it down at his side as it unfolded. "There's a toll for moving through this district. Especially new arrivals." He brought his hand up, palm up. "Guess you hadn't heard of it. We'll go easy this time, just hand over all your weapons and credits."

Luther's eyes slid to the side to meet with Tarak's. The batarian nodded fractionally, and the drakensis smiled more broadly. "See now, there's goin' t' be a problem with that, Illo," he commented.

Illo brought the shotgun up to in both hands, holding it casually across his stomach. "Don't be stupid, Snake. We've got you surrounded-"

In the next instant the situation exploded into violence as Luther drew the Jamieson and threw it at the loudmouthed turian, the subsonic projectile bypassing the kinetic shields of his armor and burying itself in his arm as he started to turn. The drakensis was already moving in the instant after the blade had left his hand, his legs propelling him most of the way towards an alley off to the side, landing with a roll that brought him the rest of the way in. An inward snarl at this miss. _Wanted to hit that pigfuckah in the chest._

His T-8 was out as he finished the roll in a crouch while the gang leader, Illo, let out a shriek of pain and staggered backward as the rest of the turians' moved forward to cover him, guns blazing. Tarak was only a moment behind him in moving for the alley, while the ghouloons let out shatteringly loud roars in the closed in street, one pulling his SAW-4 and unleashing a barrage of fire on the turians', while the other threw forward a fist at the end of a startlingly long arm to end in a turian face with a crunching sound.

"Get in here!" he shouted at the ghouloons as he brought the assault rifle up and started firing precise bursts at unarmored turians, dropping them and sending the rest scrambling for cover, popping shots off over their shoulders or off to their sides as they went. Tarak was firing at the other end in the next instant, while the ghouloon with its light machine gun out laid down suppressing fire while it loped over towards the alley.

The other ghouloon, however, pulled the huge curved knife from its belt and made a leap at the nearest concentration of turians, drool hanging from its fanged jaws. There were screams as it began to attack the gang members' around it, ripping into them with the blade and smashing them with its other arm with strength surpassing the gorilla that made up part of its genetic makeup.

Luther swore aloud as he saw the ghouloon begin its rampage. _Damn thing's lost it._ Sometimes the animal ferocity just overcame the limited human intelligence they had given them. _Well, at least _that_ side of the street should be distracted._

"Let's get out of here," Luther called to Tarak. The batarian nodded agreement and plunged deeper into the alley, leading the drakensis and remaining ghouloon away from the confrontation. They stopped at the first turn, waited until the first turians appeared at the mouth of the alley, then cut them down before continuing. _That'll make 'em mo' cautious._

Luther swore under his breath as he waded through the rotting garbage and, in a few cases, bodies that filled the narrow, twisting alleys. His head went up when the sounds of automatic fire suddenly rose even higher behind them. He looked questioningly at Tarak.

"Sounds like the asari finally showed up." A short grunt of laughter. "This district will probably be under an ownership dispute now too."

Luther shook his head. "This is fuckin' insane."

The batarian smirked. "Welcome to Omega."


	24. Chapter 24

For those who are curious what the ghouloons look like, the following tells you where to go for the book cover for the Draka series book 'Drakon'. The ghouloon is in the background in a mural, holding a Holbars-style gun. In the foreground is a drakensis.

Go to www (dot) stephenhickman (dot) com/draken (dot) htm

Again, reviews are welcome. They're what's keeping me writing.

* * *

**PRESIDIUM**

**CITADEL**

**WIDOW SYSTEM**

**SERPENT NEBULA**

Miguel Hiero stood on the balcony outside of the Human Embassy, resting his hands on the parapet and looking out over the Presidium. The low murmur of voices of the various bureaucrats, diplomats and various others with official government business on the walkways below provided a backdrop to the sound of breezes blowing through the leaves of the trees below, and the more distant splashing from the jets of water spouting in the level's central lake.

_Some personal benefits to having an embassy, in addition to the larger ones,_ he thought. The weather was far more temperate than the desert-like heat of Hermosillo he remembered from before the Fall. _More like San Francisco,_ he decided. He had become accustomed to the controlled weather of the Citadel; he and his family had been living here for most of the past decade, with only occasional trips back to a Samothrace that had developed remarkably fast in the snapshots of each visit, fueled by asari and volus investment in the planet's extensive platinum deposits, as well as human and drell drive harnessed by terms of National Service.

His mouth twisted as he recalled the day three years ago that both humanity and the drakensis had been granted embassies on the Citadel. The Salarian Councilor had floated the idea of the two races sharing an embassy, as the elcor and volus did. That had produced something previously unimaginable: Samothracians and Draka on the same side. He and Helene Renston, newly appointed as the human and drakensis ambassadors respectively, had argued ferociously against that arrangement, outlining their species' shared history. Surprisingly, they had found themselves backing each other on certain points when the other faltered.

_Which is what the Council probably had in mind when they proposed the idea,_ Miguel thought, shaking his head. That was how he had interpreted the knowing smile on the Asari Councilor's face when they had eventually backed off from that suggestion and finally arranged separate embassies, anyway. _We agree that we hate each other, can't trust each other, and can't stand the other's company,_ he thought morosely. _Hurray._

The drakensis had ended up getting a larger embassy that looked directly out over the Presidium, giving it an open and airy atmosphere, while humanity had been stuck with a smaller, indoor embassy. _But at least it has _access_ to a balcony._ The Council apparently attached the relative importance of each race with respect to galactic affairs to the dimensions of their embassy. _And the stark fact is that the Snakes have more numbers, both population and military, than we do._ It went along with what he had come to think of as the trademark of the Council: mind games and talking over real action.

Miguel straightened from the parapet with a sigh and made his way back into his office. It was sparsely decorated: a few desert landscapes on the walls; an old photograph on his desk of himself as a boy with his mother in Sonora, alongside a more modern electronic frame displaying he and his family on a recent trip to Jefferson; and the Samothracian flag hanging on the wall behind his desk, the two white wings of the Winged Victory of Samothrace flaring out from a sphere of white stars representing each system within the USS, all on a sky blue background.

_Ironic that we and the Snakes both revere the Ancient Greeks._ The statue commemorated on the flag, the Winged Victory, had been discovered in the 1860s by a French amateur archaeologist on the island of Samothrace and sent to Paris. It had been removed from the Louvre at the outbreak of the Eurasian War and taken outside Paris, then shipped to Britain with other art pieces along with the flood of refugees fleeing the Draka advance to the European Atlantic coast later in the war. Later still it had been shipped to New York where it had held pride of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until the Fall, where it had been presumably destroyed by the multiple Draka fusion bombs that had vaporized the old American capital. The Winged Victory had held enough in the memories of the human refugees - along with its association with the name Samothrace - that it had been utilized as a national symbol.

_We each borrow from the cradle of Western civilization, but take different aspects from it,_ he mused. _We from the basic democratic principles of Athens and Republican Rome, while the Draka have taken on the aspects of Sparta, with its hereditary citizen-soldiers and slave castes, and the Roman legions. Hard to believe two such different societies can come from the same sources. Of course, the philosophical thinkers of the 19th Century added to it._

He was distracted from his historical ruminations by the beeping from his extranet terminal that signaled an incoming call. After checking the call's origin, he sighed again as he reached a hand out to the holographic interface to accept it. _Someone in Jefferson again._ As ambassador for humanity, he represented his species to the Council. What many back on Samothrace failed to understand was that he had less power than they thought he did. He could bring their concerns and proposals before the Council, but they held the ultimate power and could choose to dismiss anything he said.

_The Turian Councilor is sympathetic to us, but we've lost political clout as memories of the drell evacuation have started to fade,_ he thought with a familiar bitterness as the terminal started to establish a real-time connection. With the Turian Hierarchy's ships helping to patrol Samothrace's claimed space in the Attican Traverse, a lot of aliens saw humanity as a more militaristic version of the volus – a client species of the turians in everything but name.

_Maybe once the _New America's_ refitting is finally finished they'll view us differently._ According to the Naval Forces, once it was completed the former colony ship would be a dreadnought on par with the Asari Republics' _Destiny Ascension,_ the current flagship of the Citadel Fleet, in both size and firepower. The down side was that they estimated it was still more than a decade before it would be combat ready.

_In the mean time we have to juggle expanding our shipbuilding capabilities with building up the Naval Forces, along with everything else that needs to be done._ The USS was in a race to build a nation that was self-sufficient in defense out of a frontier galactic region that was bare of infrastructure and with a relatively minuscule population. And the enemies they were looking to guard against – the Domination, the Hegemony, and the various criminals that still operated within the Traverse and out of the Terminus Systems – all had long established economies and much larger populations to draw upon.

With those dispiriting thoughts running through his head, he straightened as the final levels of the latest encryption developed by the SSI and carefully contracted salarian programmers were established and the call finally connected. Miguel raised an eyebrow as a familiar face appeared on the screen, receding gray hair with streaks of the original dark brown and blue eyes staring out of an Anglo-Saxon face. "Are you sure this connection is secure, _Senor_ Winters?" he asked. He had never been contacted by the Institute man by anything other than personal meetings before, one of the old-fashioned methods the SSI used to prevent the other species more experienced the ways of the extranet from intercepting Samothracian official correspondence and intelligence.

"Aye, we're set," the Englishman replied. "Ye know I'd prefer other methods, but we thought ye needed to know this as soon as possible." A pause as he waited for the ambassador to switch mental gears to receive information, then continued. "One of our agents was on an operation out in th' Traverse, a planet called Tuntau. She encountered a Council Spectre while monitoring a clandestine meeting between the Draka and their batarian allies. Her team returned to report that it went south an' turned into a firefight, but the main players got away. The batarians were handin' ower some aliens of the Council species, an' at least one was a merc. They strongly suspect a slavin' connection, but nothin' concrete."

Miguel frowned as he absorbed the information. He wondered how a Spectre had gotten involved, but knew enough to realize that he'd probably never find out why. Everything surrounding the Council's elite agents was classified, and the SSI was barely making any ground in learning more about their organization.

"I suspect you have more to tell me," he said finally; the information that had been presented so far didn't carry the urgency that required a security risk such as this.

Winters nodded. "Whey aye. The Spectre recruited her to follow the players. She's gone with 'im to Omega out in th' Terminus."

Miguel opened his mouth, then closed it. He had been about to reply, but the implications of that piece of information kept stacking up the more he mulled it over. The fact that an SSI agent was working with a Spectre could only help improving Samothrace's image to the Council. _Unless the Spectre has some ulterior motive,_ he thought. Off hand he couldn't think of any. Unless...

Winters put what he was starting to develop in his own mind into words. "D'ye think it's possible he could be evaluatin' our agent for membership in their ranks?" There was a gleam in the Briton's eyes at the thought. "A human Spectre?"

Miguel found himself smiling despite himself at the idea. The Spectres represented the Council's power and authority. If they were to accept a human into their ranks, it would give humanity extensive political clout. _Maybe even eventual membership in the Council itself._

He shook his head as soon as the thought passed through his head, scolding himself inwardly for the flight of fancy. "The Spectres are recruited exclusively from the Council races," he answered aloud. "Much as we hate to admit it, humanity isn't even a regional power at the moment. We've settled a large part of the Traverse but the settlements are far flung and sparsely settled, and the Snakes are competing with us over the rest. Without the turians acting as a deterrent, the Draka and the batarians would have tried to overrun us already. I don't think they would seriously consider a human as a Spectre, not even the turians."

Which left potentially the most staggering implication. "What concerns me most is that the Terminus Systems' don't recognize the authority of the Council, and the Spectres are the biggest symbol of that," Miguel continued. "From all we've heard the species there are fractious and constantly war with each other, but a perceived threat from Council Space might unify them into waging a war against the Citadel."

Winters frowned. "Are ye sayin' that this Spectre may have gone rogue?"

"Not necessarily. Spectres are given extensive leeway to do what they think is necessary to protect Council Space." A pause as he considered. "It's possible the Council doesn't know what this Spectre is up to." A smile. "Which means we possibly have information that they don't." And providing it would also help improve their reputation with the Council. _And even if they do have the information, it just proves that we're willing to cooperate with them anyway._ The situation was a win-win for Samothrace anyway you looked at it.

Miguel explained his reasoning briefly to the Institute spook, then continued, "The only way this could work out even better is if the Spectre and our agent can actually prove the drakensis and the batarians are trading citizens of the Council races as slaves."

"I know the agent we've got out there, Ambassador," Winters replied with a smile. "If it's there t' be found, she'll get it done."

* * *

**APPROACHING OMEGA**

**SAHRABARIK SYSTEM**

**OMEGA NEBULA**

**TERMINUS SYSTEMS**

**MAY 13, 2014**

_Maybe this was a mistake,_ Janet Lefarge thought to herself as she set the heel of her hand on her lower back and stretched. There was a crackling of vertebrae and a feeling of relief. She sighed at the eased muscles and glowered at the salarian-style bed that was in one of the few compartments of the Spectre's ship, tossed in seemingly as an afterthought alongside several containers of electronic components, rations, and the various other accouterments he apparently needed for his job.

"If I had to travel with an alien, it could have at least been a mammal," she muttered under her breath. The bed was astonishingly hard, manufactured for the comfort of an amphibian species. The fact that she had the run of the room for most of the time because the salarian needed only one hour of sleep a day was little compensation. She was starting to feel like one of the spare pieces of equipment that had been tossed in there.

The Spectre, Dublo, had barely spoken to her outside of the occasional grilling over information about the Draka and the Domination in general. Return questions had been met with clipped answers, monosyllabic where possible, or silence. Considering that most of the salarians she had encountered tended towards chattiness, dealing with one that was positively taciturn left her at a bit of a loss. Especially considering that she tended towards extroversion herself.

She had reviewed the intel that had been gathered so far countless times in a small notebook. She had stripped and maintained the weapons she had brought with her until they were in near factory condition. She had attempted to try various alien foods in case her own rations ran out – and discovered that she liked tupari juice. But she had continued to rattle around in the cramped confines of the shuttle, prowling around for things to do during the days it took for a journey across the galaxy through the relay network. She had finally settled on sessions of various exercises, relying on physical exertion to vent her frustration and boredom.

That had created some embarrassing moments – at least for her – when she had used to lavatory to clean up after her workouts and the Spectre had walked in on her when he attempted to use the facilities himself. Logically, she understood that salarians laid eggs and that they didn't possess sex drives like humans and some other species did. Moreover, she understood that a salarian probably wouldn't even find a human physically attractive. Nevertheless, she still recognized him as male, even if one of an alien race. _And I _really_ wish I hadn't remembered that his species has photographic memory._ After her furious reaction at two further walk-ins after the first one, the salarian had finally gotten the message that humans – or at least that particular human – wanted privacy.

"Serves him right," she muttered as she finished getting dressed, pulling her tank top down over the taut muscle of her stomach. She had the distinct impression that she had been invited along merely as a contingency of some sort, or maybe a faster way of getting detailed information about the Snakes than searching the extranet. _God knows he's not treating me on anything like equal terms._

Janet walked out of the room after giving her short hair a few swipes with a brush and setting it back inside her pack. The Spectre had said that they'd be arriving at Omega today. _Or at least he said we'd arrive after what he had 'discovered was an average human sleeping cycle'._ She severely hoped that meant he had looked it up on the extranet and hadn't been watching her sleep. The thought of those big, black pupilless eyes gazing at her while she was unconscious gave her the willies.

She paused as she heard voices talking up ahead, her mind immediately clearing itself and focusing on the situation at hand. _That's weird,_ she thought. _He's never used his terminal for real-time calls before._ She silently slipped her boots off and set them aside, then walked silently over to the door the voices were coming from in her socks. She crouched next to it, waited until she could hear Dublo talking, then glanced around the corner briefly and smoothly; sudden movements tended to attract the eye.

She took a moment to mentally process what she had seen. The salarian Spectre had been standing in front of something she had been curious about shortly after she had first come aboard: a set of three holographic emitters set up in a line against one wall. She had asked him about it, but that had been one of the questions that had been met with silence. Now they were projecting the three-dimensional monochrome images of three individuals: a turian, an asari, and another salarian.

"You know we prefer not to become involved in the specifics of Spectre activities," she heard a female voice say: the asari. "However, we have received a troubling report from the Human Ambassador."

"He told us that you are currently en route to the Terminus Systems with a human intelligence operative," the other salarian continued. "More worrying still, we've heard that you're destination is Omega itself."

Janet's eyes widened. _It's the Council! He's speaking to the Council personally._ She knew that Spectres answered only to the Council, but she hadn't expected that it meant personal real-time communication with the three most powerful individuals in the galaxy. She thought that they would be busy enough without having to deal with each and every one of their agents. _I suppose that's proof enough that there can't be that many Spectres._

She refocused her attention back to the conversation as she heard another voice chime in, this with the distinct flanged quality of a turian. "You do realize that the authority of the Council is not recognized there, Flemin? And that if they find out you are a Spectre that it could mean interstellar war?"

"I do realize that, Councilor," Dublo replied. "However, my current investigation has shown me strong evidence that certain political entities based in Citadel Space could be involved in conspiracies infringing upon Council law and treaties. That same evidence has led me to Omega where they are currently active."

There was a moment of silence, then the Salarian Councilor replied. "It is true that the Special Tasks Group has been known to actively follow sources of information. I do remind you, Flemin, that you are no longer in the STG but are, in fact, a Spectre now."

"I can still remain discreet," Dublo replied. "I have always made active use of my Spectre status only as a last resort, and doing so would only hinder my investigation in a location that doesn't recognize Council authority, such as Omega.

"That is one reason I have had the human operative accompany me," he continued. "She is of the Human Strategic Studies Institute, an organization that has a vested interest in pursuing these same political entities. They have only rarely operated within the Terminus Systems, and never within Omega, but the SSI will draw less attention than a Spectre while overshadowing my involvement."

"Thereby putting the Human USS under the threat of Terminus retaliation!" the Turian Councilor retorted angrily. "Might I remind you that the Hierarchy patrols their space as part of a bilateral agreement? And that they are as much a part of Citadel Space as the Salarian Union?"

"Please," the Asari Councilor interjected in a soothing tone, silencing her turian counterpart. "I believe that Flemin has only the best interests of Council Space at heart. There is a reason we have given Spectres the powers to do as they see fit in the pursuit of their mandate." Her head turned to spear the salarian Spectre with her gaze. "We will trust you to do what you deem necessary in the pursuit of this operation. But there are extremely sensitive political considerations, with regards to the Terminus Systems on one hand, and the drakensis and batarians on the other." She turned her head to gauge the Salarian Councilor, who nodded. Another look to the Turian Councilor was met with an agitated fidgeting of his mandibles, followed by an abrupt nod.

"You are to maintain infiltration protocols," the Salarian Councilor warned. "We do not want this investigation developing into an incident." Dublo nodded in response.

"We will await your next report then," the Asari Councilor concluded. The holograms faded from view and the Spectre watched the spot where they had been for a few moments, the only sound that of the emitters powering down. When he turned to leave the room, he stopped abruptly as he saw Janet standing in the doorway, her boots back on her feet, a furious expression on her face, and fists clenched at her sides.

"The Council had no idea we were heading for Omega?" she demanded. "And you were planning on using the Institute – using _me!_ – as a scapegoat? You may be a Spectre, but I ought to knock you on your ass!"

Her sudden appearance and going immediately on the attack was partly strategy, and partly her being majorly pissed off. She knew she was dealing with a professional intelligence operative, so getting him as mentally unbalanced as possible was her best bet in gaining an advantage.

Dublo held up a placatory hand, its two fingers and thumb spread out. "Please, let me explain," he said quickly. "The reasons for my withholding this information from the Council should be evident, considering their reaction just now." Janet clenched her jaw, but nodded slightly in acknowledgment of that point at the very least.

"When my investigation was complete, I would have provided them a full debriefing," he continued. "As for my reasons for bringing you along..." He smiled and spread his hands, looking... sheepish? "Truthfully, I developed that reason shortly after my conversation with the Council began, though I admit it makes sense in hindsight.

"However," he put in quickly, before Janet could explode, "my original reasons were still good. I need backup on this investigation. Having an operative of the SSI makes sense for any dealings with any entities on Omega. Your Samothrace, while impressive, doesn't pose the threat to the Terminus Systems as a whole that other component species of Citadel Space would. _And_ your people's well known antagonism with the drakensis and the batarians makes your involvement completely logical." He tilted his head to the side, waving a hand out with one palm up. "Your involvement is much less likely to provoke an incident than my presence, a salarian who could either be a member of the Salarian Special Tasks Group or a Spectre."

Janet grimaced slightly as she considered the Spectre's words. It made too much sense. She hated that it utilized Samothrace's current weakness, but she was willing to admit that it made sense to use it as an asset in this instance. She _wanted_ to be angry with him, but...

"Then what about what's been occurring during our trip here?" she ground out, putting into words what was really bothering her. "You say you brought me along as backup, but you've been treating me as little more than a ready source of information, like some datapad you've thrown into a container back there. Nothing like a team member, let alone a partner!" She folded her arms. "I don't know how your STG works, but in the Institute we don't treat our people like cargo." _Most of the time,_ she added mentally.

"Ah." Dublo clasped his hands behind his back as he paced back and forth. "I have... not had to work with anyone for quite a while," he said after a long moment. "It has been nearly a decade since I was with the STG, and most of my missions as a Spectre have required little to no assistance." He stopped and looked at her. "I am... unpracticed at working with fellow members of the intelligence community. Also, haven't had to deal with humans before." He spread his hands. "My fault, and I apologize. I will endeavor to do better."

Janet glared at him for a few more seconds, then sighed through her nose and shook her head. "Fine," she said shortly. "We're getting close to Omega?" She waited for his nod, then returned it with one of her own. "Then I'll see you then. I need to see to my equipment before we disembark."

She turned on her heel and walked out, giving herself the luxury of a deeper sigh as she walked down the corridor. "He's still a jerk," she muttered under her breath. _But I guess I can't ask for a better apology than that. I guess I'll see how things go from here._

* * *

Dublo watched the human female walk out of the room, then shook his head. _Hormone-based species are quite troublesome to work with,_ he thought to himself as he busied himself with checking to make sure the holographic emitters were still in full working order – the powering down sequence had taken a fraction of a second too long this time.

After tweaking the thermal conductor cooling system, he headed back to the front of the ship and slid into the pilot's seat. Omega was fast approaching now and he needed to find a relatively secure port to dock his ship at. He took a moment to look at Omega itself as it grew bigger in his vidscreen. The top portion showed its origin as an asteroid, while a massive metallic stalk extended from the bottom of it, lit up with habitation and littered with haphazard arms constructed out from from it, they in turn littered with more add-ons. All in all it reminded Dublo vaguely of the images of nuclear explosions he had viewed, the signature mushroom cloud.

With characteristic quickness, his mind flitted back to the problem of the SSI agent. She was brash and short-tempered, but occasionally showed a startling flash of insight that hinted at a calculating mind beneath.

_If not for the involvement of the Draka, I would have left her behind on Tuntau._ But having a member of their perennial enemy along could prove useful in many ways; as a goad for one. _Provoking an opponent into a furious reaction can reveal weaknesses._ He would need all the help he could get on that score, considering the formidable physical and combat prowess the drakensis and their ghouloon minions displayed.

"Attention, salarian ship!" The harsh voice suddenly blared over his terminal. "This is Omega Control. We have you on an approach vector. Do you want to dock?"

The corners of Dublo's mouth turned up slightly. He knew from studied reports that Omega had many 'Omega Controls' operated by the station's larger factions, each claiming to be _the_ Omega Control. Fortunately, they seemed to operate by unspoken agreement to hail only the ships that were approaching docks that their respective faction controlled. Conflicts over that in the past had led to numerous ship collisions near or with the station.

"This is the salarian ship, Omega Control," he replied. "I am indeed seeking to dock. Stand by."

"Copy, salarian ship. Be prepared to pay the docking fee, as well as any tolls if you try to go into any other districts," the person at the other end said matter-of-factly. "Firefights are at a minimum today at this section of the station, so you should be able to move around pretty easy."

Dublo shook his head at the news, reported as casually as that of the weather around a spaceport on a planet's surface. "Copy, Omega Control." _Welcome to Omega,_ he thought ruefully.


	25. Chapter 25

Luther Tull attracted looks as he walked down the street in the batarian district he was currently residing in. That was mostly due to the fact that he was wearing full armor, and was festooned with the entire arsenal of small arms he had brought with him. A pair of batarians shot him way glances as they neared him. He scowled and glared at them until they picked up their pace and gave him a wide berth before hurrying past.

He was only a couple of blocks away from the small two-story warehouse that the War Directorate's Intelligence Section and their batarian counterparts had set up as their base of operations in Omega. It was located along the edges of a small spaceport that was still being repaired after the 'ownership dispute' the batarians had had the day before with that turian gang, the Primarchs, when they had attempted to expand into it. The part of the district further into the station was still the scene of firefights, as well as random sniper fire that targeted every turian and batarian that wandered into their sights on the streets below – and a good many that weren't either.

That was one reason he was wearing the armor. The other was that the station was filled with the types of people who were unwelcome in Citadel Space: mercenaries, slavers, assassins, and criminals from all races. He was used to dealing with wild sophonts; he'd dealt with them before on the Citadel and in the more cosmopolitan cities back on Earth, where many aliens under the watchful but discreet eye of the Security Directorate could be found taking in the sights of the Domination and purchasing those of its artisan-crafted products that were rarely found in the galactic markets.

_But the aliens here are_ _positively_ feral!, he thought, keeping his eyes moving around. Citizens always carried a weapon with them at all times as a mark of their status, even if it was just a small pistol or knife at home. But in a place like this, surrounded with feral sophonts, he wasn't satisfied with anything less than armor, kinetic shields, and full combat gear – and even then he wasn't comfortable.

"Hey!" The voice came from behind him. Luther turned sideways so that he wouldn't be craning his head back over his shoulder and leaving his front open to an unexpected attack, _then_ glanced back down the street to see Tarak trotting after him. The batarian was wearing armor himself, but had only a shotgun slotted into the armor at his lower back.

Luther was shaking his head as the SIU trooper slowed his pace as he neared and closed the distance at a walk. "Yo' crazy walkin' 'round here like that." He motioned his head back down the road for Tarak to walk with him, then continued down the street. "Shotguns have limited range and a low rate of fire."

"You're crazy walking out here at all," the batarian retorted. "We have a perfectly good building to wait in until the rest of the team shows up, and this district is still under dispute."

The Draka grimaced. "It may be 'perfectly good' to you, but that Loki-cursed place is too cramped, and too..." He paused as he rolled words around in his mind. "...convoluted," he finished.

The warehouse they were staying in had seemingly been built by someone with a nature rivaling that of the Trickster himself. It had been constructed as a maddening maze of corridors and stairwells. To get from one end of the building to the other, it was actually necessary to take one flight of stairs up from the common room to a landing that overlooked the garage, then back down to the ground floor, weave through several alternating left and right turns of branching hallways, then climb up another flight of stairs to the storage areas in the back.

Tarak shrugged his shoulders. "You have to get used to things being like that on Omega." Having stated what to him was a fact of life, he changed the subject. "As for the shotgun, you're the one who's going to attract unnecessary attention with all that firepower. It's a smaller chance that you'll get attacked, but you're definitely going to stick in someone's memory if someone comes around asking questions."

Luther frowned, part of his mind still concentrating on the first statement. Just accepting things as they were when they weren't to their liking just wasn't something Draka did. Most of the world had abandoned chattel slavery over the course of the 19th Century, but the Draka had persisted, going only so far as to term their subject-races 'serfs' to placate the then more powerful Britain and Europe. When they had conquered the Middle East and Central Asia during the Great War, and then Europe and China after the Eurasian War, they had thrown virtually limitless manual labor and a cold, calculating ruthlessness at reshaping the landscape of entire continents to suit their needs. They deconstructed towns and other rural settlements and sowed forests and transplanted wild animals in their place, leaving only cities, the Landholders' plantations, and lethally dangerous wilderness so that the serfs could be more easily monitored, any attempts at their escape would be impossible, and the Citizens' lust for the hunt could be satisfied.

_The same thing they're doing in the New Territories,_ he thought. _Outside of the radiation zones and the Reserves filled with bushmen, anyway._

While part of his mind worried at that, the rest of it concentrated on the conversation. "Askin' questions? Like who, the 'big bad' Primarchs?" he jeered. "If those turian bastards want to have another go, I'm happy to oblige. We'll be mo' than ready fo' them this time."

Tarak frowned himself. "I'm all for a good fight, Tull, but you have to choose your battles. Discretion is key with this kind of work. I know your people had that war with the turians, but–"

"Do you?" the drakensis suddenly cut in, expression hard. "Do you really? I was _on_ Vritra 2 durin' the turian occupation. I saw them crater hectares of land to wipe out one stick of troops." He bared his teeth in what was only partly a grin and when he spoke again, his accent was thicker. "When ouah ships chased theirs off, I was in on ouah revenge against they ground forces. We slaughtered 'em 'til the ground was soaked blue, and I cut off mandibles with my knife 'til my belt was _filled_ with loops of 'em." That had proven to be the turian alternative to the age old Draka custom of slicing off ears for trophies.

The batarian's face remained expressionless during the recounting. "So you don't like turians," he stated after Luther was finished. "I get it. But this isn't the time for you to indulge yourself in killing some." He glanced around briefly to see if anyone was nearby, then continued. "There are other factions on Omega besides the Primarchs that might become curious if they discovered our peoples' governments operating here. Neither of our superiors wants that. There's a reason we were meeting on an uninhabited planet in the Attican Traverse in the first place."

Luther glared at Tarak for a long moment, then growled deep in his throat as he looked away from him. _I _hate_ bein' lectured by him,_ he thought darkly. As he took a deep breath through his nose he consciously throttled back the physical reactions of his body that were contributing to his anger, then used a meditation technique to calm his mind. _But he has a point,_ he finally conceded. _The Will is Master. I am a Citizen of the State. I will not shame my blood befo' foreigners._

He hated the turians for what they had done, making the Draka appear weak during their occupation of the colonial outpost. That one turian making _him_ appear weak when he had closed hand-to-hand during that one skirmish. _But lettin' it interfere with my service to the State, lettin' it make me emotional, is unacceptable. It's... serfish._

Having mastered and browbeat himself back into a cool self-control, he nodded to Tarak. "Yo' right," he conceded evenly. They walked on for several more steps before he added, "I still hate that damn warehouse though."

The batarian let out a short grunt of a laugh as they continued to walk deeper into the station. Before long Luther began to have trouble telling exactly where they were. As if the warehouse were a microcosm of the station as a whole, the buildings seemed to have been constructed without plan or purpose; streets twisted and turned unexpectedly, and sometimes curled back on themselves to form infuriating dead-ends. He had heard that even residents of Omega could quickly become lost or disoriented, and the overall effect was highly unsettling for new arrivals.

While he hated the filth, the stinks and the sheer untidiness of the station, the sounds that assailed his sensitive hearing were no better. Unlike Council Space, most aliens here refused to speak the common trade language unless absolutely necessary. An endless cacophony of grunts, squawks, and squeaks assailed his ears as the two of them made their way through the crowds, his automated translator useless in the face of obscure interstellar dialects it wasn't programmed to decipher.

A hanar floated up from behind them and brushed by the Draka's shoulder, moving quickly. Luther shied away from the long, trailing tentacles, restraining an urge to reach a hand out and tear a few of them loose at the violation of his personal space.

Tarak seemed to sense his mood and led them off of the main street into the twisting side streets. Soon the racket of alien voices faded behind them and the all too familiar smell of rot and spent incendiaries filled the air. A few blocks later, they came upon the reason for it.

The buildings in this area showed evidence of recent battles. Several doorways were scorched with burn marks and doors either lay on the street nearby or hung at awkward angles, as if they had been quickly replaced after they had been shot down or blown off by an explosion. The outside of the buildings were pockmarked with the impact of stray rounds, with the edges near doorways and gaping windows chewed up by concentrated gunfire.

"Not the so't of place I had in mind when I went fo' a walk," Luther said dryly.

Tarak frowned as he took in the quiet streets. "Something's wrong. I think we should get off the–"

The two of them suddenly ducked and bolted for cover as a sniper round deflected off of the batarian's kinetic shields. They had just made it into the alley when another round ricocheted off of the street behind them.

"Sniper," the SIU soldier remarked unnecessarily.

"An' the Presidium's pricey to live in," the Draka replied, matching him in stating the obvious. "Did yo' see where it came from?"

"No. Probably the upper floors of one of the buildings." Tarak shook his head. "We'll just have to stay off the main street and double back." Realizing how risky a proposition it was to try finding a new way in the labyrinth of Omega's streets, he unclipped his Batarian State Arms shotgun from his back and held it ready in his hands.

Luther unclipped his assault rifle with a sour look. "Joy an' delight undiluted," he muttered.

The two of them began making their way through the alleyways, pausing only to take turns checking around corners before proceeding onward. The drakensis grimaced inwardly as his armored boots waded through the refuse littering the alleys. _Gods, I think I'm actually gettin' used to the smell!_ he thought with dismay.

It was some time later when a scratching sound followed by a crash brought Luther's Holbars snapping around to point down the alley the sounds were still echoing through. His eyes narrowed as he searched for the cause, then widened slightly as a figure straightened from its crouch next to the bodies of some dead batarian gangers. It glared at him with crimson eyes centered with black pupils, letting out a sound halfway between a hiss and a snarl through an alarming amount of yellow needle-like teeth set in blackened elongated jaws. It's entire bipedal body was covered with a malformed brownish carapace that was black at its extremities and had spikes protruding from the back of its skull and at its joints.

"Go 'way," it suddenly said in a high, hissing voice. "These mine!"

"White Christ!" the Draka blurted before he could stop himself, startled. "It can talk!"

Tarak trotted back to the meeting of the two alleys as he heard Luther's exclamation. He peered at the creature, then made a sound of disgust. "It's just a vorcha, Tull. They're nothing but pests and scavengers."

"But... it can talk," the drakensis repeated, nonplussed. The creature – the vorcha – was completely unlike any other alien he had seen, and it practically exuded the word 'ugly'. But his world view as he had matured had taught him that if it spoke, it was either a Citizen, a serf, or a potential serf, be it a human, servus or ghouloon. He had expanded that viewpoint after the Domination had made contact with the Citadel. After that, aliens ranged from the turians who counted as 'enemies', the batarians who were 'allies', and the asari who were considered 'refined'. But he had never heard a sophont dismissed as a 'pest' with all the inconsequential uselessness inherent in the word.

"Barely." Tarak raised his shotgun to his shoulder casually and fired, taking off the vorcha's arm near the shoulder. It shrieked in pain and fell to its knees as it clutched at the stump where its mangled limb had been.

Luther turned his head slightly and was about to say something sharp – personally, he didn't relish pointless suffering as much as the batarians seemingly did, as well as some Draka, and the vorcha wasn't a particularly dangerous threat.

But the words died in his mouth as the blood flow stopped within seconds and he could visibly make out the flesh beginning to knit itself back together.

"Sweet mother Freya," he finally managed, watching the process with an awed fascination. Drakensis were able to heal quickly, and the krogan were said to be able to regenerate even faster and have backup organs besides. But neither healed at anything like the speed at which the vorcha was.

Tarak lowered the shotgun. "Yeah, they can heal fast and it'll regenerate its arm by the end of the week. But they're nearly as dumb as a varren, they only live around twenty years, and they breed too damn fast. The only reason they got off their homeworld is because they stowed away on visiting ships." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Like I said, they're scavengers and they'll swarm anyone trespassing on what they see as their territory if they have large numbers on their side."

He glanced around with two of his eyes, keeping the other pair on the vorcha. "Speaking of which, let's get moving. We don't know how many of his friends might be nearby."

"Right." Luther started to follow the batarian, but shot another look back at the vorcha. It watched them leaving and shot another parting hiss-snarl before crouching back next to the bodies and continuing to paw them over with its remaining arm.

From Tarak's account, the vorcha were indeed a pestilence – short-lived, fast breeding, and scavenging whatever they could find. _I'm glad I'm not goin' to see what that thing is plannin' to do with those bodies,_ he thought a bit queasily.

But the fact that it was able to speak kept bringing back to him a term that all Draka learned from their parents and in school. A term from the Romans, an eminently practical people, that described their slaves.

_Instrumentum vocale. _The tool that speaks.

* * *

Janet Lefarge kept her eyes moving around warily as she walked through the streets of Omega, consciously aware of the Concord pistol at her hip. On the Spectre's advice she was only wearing her civvies on this foray into the station, leaving her armor and more powerful weapons back in the ship.

Dublo was a step behind her, covering their back and providing the pretense that she was the superior of the pair. He was as lightly dressed as she, but _he_ was carrying an assault rifle manufactured by Elanus Risk Control Services, a turian security firm whose products were popular with mercenaries across the galaxy. His head was turning more openly to keep a careful watch, more appropriate for his underling persona.

"You sure this is a good idea?" she said over her shoulder, her voice tense. They were on their way to what they had determined was the best information broker on Omega. The problem was that she had also made a name for herself as a crime lord that with well known aspirations towards dominating the station.

Dublo nodded abruptly. "It's the only way we'll find the drakensis and batarian within a reasonable timetable. We do not need to worry too much." A brief frown. "The STG databanks had unfortunately little intelligence about this Aria T'Loak, but she does have a reputation for keeping her word alongside a ruthless practicality. As long as we do not pose a threat to her, we should be fine."

"Great," she muttered. _All we have to do is not piss off an unscrupulous asari with delusions of grandeur. How hard can _that_ be?_ she thought sardonically.

As they continued onward in silence, Janet marveled at the sheer size of the interior of the station. The only place she could compare it to was Ceres back before the Fall, but the planetoid in the Sol System's asteroid belt had never been completely hollowed out as this smaller one had. Ceres had been mainly cramped corridors carved out of the rock with some larger chambers. _Of course, the aliens out here had centuries to work with, while we only had a few decades._

The sheer amount of lawlessness was also new to her. She had spent most of her life in the asteroid belt living in a spin habitat inhabited by scientists and soldiers, while Samothrace had a negligible crime rate that was only in recent years starting to rise as the larger settlements started developing into established cities. The closest analogue she could think of was her father's stories of New York City before he and her mother had moved into space for the New America Project. It had been full of gangs derived from the waves of immigrants that had flooded into the city since the 1890s. Mexican, Sicilian and – after the immigration wave following the first border skirmishes with the Domination around the Channel Islands – British gangsters had fought with each other for complete control of organized crime in the American capital.

_You know,_ she suddenly realized, _this place is like the mirror opposite of the Citadel. Both are places where the various species of the galaxy live alongside each other, but the Citadel is the seat and symbol of a unifying galactic government representing peace and stability, while Omega is a criminal haven divided between different factions constantly fighting each other._

She idly wondered how the Snake was dealing with the realities of Omega. _Probably suffering from culture shock,_ she thought with a smirk. _'Bushmen' all over the place and no servus tripping over themselves to peel grapes for him._ She doubted anyone who lived in within the iron framework of Domination society would be able to adapt to such a place; the hidebound Draka made even the most conservative asari matriarchs look like bomb throwing radicals. _Probably kill dozens just as a reaction of the bloodlust built into their species. _A glance around._ Not that you'd notice it in this place._

Soon they came within sight of the massive building that housed the club that was the centerpiece of the asari's, Aria's, power, appropriately named Afterlife. There was a huge crowd of people waiting to get in: asari, turian, krogan, batarian, volus, and elcor. It was said to cater to individuals from every species. But they had learned that Aria had strict rules about crowd control, and those outside would have to wait for some of the revelers inside to leave – or be carried out – before the guards at the door would grant them access.

The line stretched the entire length of the massive building and disappeared around the corner at the end of the block. It would be hours before those at the tail end were able to get inside. Janet had no intention of waiting that long, however.

With the salarian Spectre at her back, she strode straight past the queue towards the entrance. Some of the people waiting in line shot resentful looks at them as they walked past, only to stare and talk to each other at realizing she was a type of alien none of them had seen before. That was part of what they had hoped would get them inside quickly, the sheer novelty factor of a human on Omega.

Janet marched up to the krogan bouncer at the front doors, waited for him to look up at her, and stated, "I need to see Aria T'Loak."

The reptilian alien blinked at her, its eyes narrowing as he looked her up and down, taking in her alien features. "Drakensis?" he finally asked.

"Human," she replied, and the krogan's curiosity became even more lively.

"Hmm," he grunted, then fell back onto his scripted procedure. "Name?"

The corner of her mouth quirked up. "I'm not on the list. But I think your boss will want to see me anyway. It's business."

The krogan's eyes narrowed even further to thin slits, but he reached up to activate the transmitter built into the collar of his suit.

"Relay a message to Aria," he said to someone inside the club. "There's a human out here. Says she wants to see her about business. She's not on the list."

Silence stretched for over a minute, then the krogan's went wide as he heard the orders coming from the other end. "Yeah, I'll send her right in." He turned back to the two of them. "Aria's sending someone to meet you. Head inside to the claim check."

Janet glanced back at Dublo and jerked her head towards the doors in a peremptory order to follow her, then passed through the doors. The walked through a short hall lined with couches and a sparse handful of people sitting and chatting up to a foyer where a couple of scantily clad asari stood preening behind the coat check counter. Nearby, two large, heavily armed and armored krogan flanked the sealed double doors leading to into the club itself while a batarian stood next to the outside of the counter.

Outside, the music from the club was so muted it could barely be heard over the noises of the street. Here, though, she could feel the beat from inside the club thrumming through her feet and into her bones – low, heavy, and fast.

"Put all weapons on the counter," the batarian said flatly.

Janet set her hands on her hips and tilted her head back slightly, looking down her nose at the alien. "I thought guns were allowed in Afterlife," she remarked.

"Not if you want a personal meeting with Aria."

She paused a moment, then spread her hands and shrugged her shoulders with studied nonchalance. She had expected it and had pressed the point only to uphold her image. Without taking her eyes from the batarian, she snatched the Concord from the holster at her hip, spun the pistol so it was butt first in her hand, and set it on the counter with a thunk.

She smiled back at his slight scowl, then turned her head to watch as one of the asari took her pistol and Dublo's assault rifle and headed into the back. The other handed her a claim ticket and flashed her a suggestive wink. Janet swallowed a nervous cough and nodded back, acknowledging the pass without returning it.

The asari pushed the doors open and the batarian led the two of them in. The club consisted of four levels, each one made up of a large outer ring surrounding a square dance floor suspended by wires and walkways in the center. Each of the various levels were different, appealing to different tastes with their own dance floors, unique musical styles, and custom drinks and chemical recreations.

The common theme, as befitted the club's name, was the afterlife. The commingling of myths and legends from across the galaxy were represented in the club. On each level individuals could see out the pleasures – or hedonistic debauchery – associated with the Halls of Athame, the Hollows, or any of a thousand other names for the promised realm allegedly waiting beyond mortal existence.

Janet peered around for references to any religions utilized by either her own people or the Snakes, but wasn't surprised when she didn't spot any. Both species were probably still too new for their influence to have come as far as Omega.

But she could feel the surreal and otherworldly air inside Afterlife. The electronic pulses of the music, the strobing lights, and the crowd created a palpable energy that urged you free from yourself, to unleash inhibitions and wild, dangerous desires... most of which could probably be satisfied in the lower levels of the club.

Adding to the exhilaration was the common knowledge that most of the patrons inside Afterlife were armed. Security forces were on hand to clamp down on riots and to prevent widespread chaos, but individuals were apparently expected to look out for themselves.

She could feel the allure of the place, but she was here on Institute business. _Damn shame. I kinda wonder what it would be like coming here like a regular person._ A smirk. _If you came here like a regular person you'd still be waiting outside. Concentrate, Janet!_

The entrance to the club was on the third level. A stifling heat rose up from the bodies gyrating on the dance floors below, making her halfway wish she could slip off the light jacket she was wearing. Well over a hundred patrons occupied this level, but the club was large enough to accommodate the numbers without making it feel overly crowded.

The batarian pushed through the crowd, parting the way before them. They climbed a staircase leading up to the VIP level above, the urgent atmosphere of the club fading behind them. On the topmost level of the club the music was less intense, the lights more subdued. It was less crowded, though Janet estimated the number of patrons at around fifty.

Standing on an elevated platform ringed with couches at the back was Aria T'Loak herself. She was facing away from them, using the vantage point to look out across the entire club, taking it all in like a god looking down from above.

Like all asari, she was beautiful by human standards. Unlike most, however, Aria's complexion was more violet than blue. She was clad in a form fitting black bodysuit with burgundy accents, daringly cut at her sides and chest to further accentuate every curve.

Janet scowled inwardly. The asari as a species seemed unfair to her. Though they were monogendered, they all had well proportioned feminine figures and an air of the ethereal and exotic about them, something that attracted the males of many species across the galaxy – and more than a few females as well. _Which unfortunately includes human men too._ _And they live for a thousand years! Unfair._

The batarian led her up the small staircase onto the dais, leaving Dublo behind to stand with the other guards below, then stepped off to the side. A turian with an omni-tool took his place, holding it up towards her. "Stand still for the body scan," he said as a light flicked out over her. She stood still until it was complete, the turian turning to state, "She's clean."

Only then did Aria turn around to regard her with a cool, impersonal gaze. A glance aside showed Janet that there was one other occupant of the platform, an old krogan sitting on one of the couches off to the side, a bottle of some anonymous liquor clenched in one fist. He shot her a curious glance, then turned his attention back to the bottle, tiling it up and taking a swig.

"I've haven't seen any humans around here before," the asari remarked calmly. "From what I've heard your people are nothing but the Domination's leftovers, and you're still around only because you hide behind the turians. Why should I have anything to do with you?"

Janet's eyes narrowed involuntarily as she suppressed a rush of anger. _She's poking you for reactions. Keep calm._ She was already getting the sense that she was dealing with somebody formidable, with centuries of experience of dealing with the galaxy's underworld. _And possibly more than that. I wish Dublo's people had been able to find out more._

She set a hand on one hip and gestured with the other as she replied, "Because the Draka are aggressive, and _because_ they're bigger than we are. It's all about offsetting their power with someone else who isn't as much of a threat. I'm sure that's how the Hierarchy looks at it." She raised an eyebrow. "They're going to come here eventually, and I hear you're looking to run this rock. It would probably suit you to be on speaking terms with the people who've dealt with them for a couple centuries longer than you have." Her eyes flicked down over Aria's outfit, and the corner of her mouth quirked up, slightly mocking. "Nice suit."

The guards around her bristled slightly at her tone, clenching their weapons, while the krogan off to the side barked out a brief laugh. Janet knew the risk she was running, but she thought she had gotten an accurate read about the type of person she was dealing with. _If I don't push back, I won't get any respect._

Aria's unreadable eyes searched hers for a moment, then her lips curved into a smile. "Why, thank you. It doesn't restrict movement, and I find its design... advantageous in certain situations. And with certain people." She shot a brief look at the old krogan as she turned and walked over the the couch, sitting smoothly and crossing her legs. "Though I have considered adding something to the ensemble." Her eyes moved over Janet's outfit, her expression becoming contemplative. "Nice jacket."

Janet shrugged her shoulders. "It works for me." At a gesture from Aria she moved to the side couch opposite the krogan and sat, the soft cushions enfolding her as she sank into them. The krogan belched over on his side of the platform as he lowered the bottle from his mouth, and the human turned a curious gaze over at him, wondering what a drunk was doing at Aria's right hand.

The asari followed her gaze and smiled. "Allow me to introduce you to Patriarch." She looked over at the krogan, her smile slightly mocking. "He used to run Omega until he and I had some... disagreements."

Patriarch glowered at her as she continued: "We settled our dispute over succession on this very spot." Her smile became smug. "I won, of course. He and I have maintained an equitable working relationship ever since. He advises me as I retake the territory and influence this organization lost during our dispute, and he gets to maintain the lifestyle he's become accustomed to."

"Hmmph," the krogan grunted, then took another drink. "I'm her trophy, she means, the reason she controls as much as she does. I know my way around this station, and all the people who respected me see me as an example that as strong as I am, she's stronger."

Aria smiled indulgently. "Yes, that too." She turned her head to look back at Janet. "Now, I don't get involved with people I don't know. So let's start with you telling me your name."

"Janet Lefarge." She wasn't particularly concerned about giving a crime lord her real name. Information brokers could find just about anything on the extranet, but the SSI kept all its information about agents on both localized networks and hard copy in clandestine high security facilities. _Besides, it might be useful when the Institute has to work on Omega in the future._

"It's been an intriguing meeting so far, Janet," the asari said. "So what brings a human all the way from Samothrace to Omega?" Her eyes flicked over to Dublo briefly. "With such unexpected company, no less. A salarian isn't the first choice many would make for a bodyguard."

Janet propped a leg up onto the opposite knee. "I don't like to be conspicuous," she answered. "Turians, krogan, they're all obvious threats. Salarians aren't, or not so much. He comes in handy when I want to be discreet." She leaned forward. "As for what brings me here, I've heard you hear everything that goes on in Omega. I'm looking for a drakensis and a batarian, possibly accompanied by ghouloons. They would have arrived in the past few days."

Aria smiled. "A human chasing a drakensis and a batarian. Not unexpected, but isn't it usually the other way around?" She waved a hand. "Never mind. Yes, I have the information you want. The Draka aren't that common on Omega either." The corner of her mouth quirked up. "You made a good point earlier about why I should help you. But the establishment of new working relationships requires more incentive."

Janet nodded. "Of course." She glanced at the guards as she reached a hand to her inside jacket pocket, then produced some thousand-credit chips. The turian guard walked over and took them from her, then handed them to Aria before returning to his post.

The asari crime lord contemplated the chips resting in her hand for a long moment, then clenched her fist around them and looked back at the human. "Good enough." She nodded to the turian, who touched his communicator and spoke in a low voice. "You'll get your information. Now, why don't we celebrate our new business relationship? How about a drink? On me."

Janet hesitated a moment, then nodded. _Why not?_ The Institute had the latest in Samothracian technology, including a nanite treatment that would prevent her from getting drunk enough to commit an indiscretion. Besides, it would help cement their deal and a further working relationship, as many small social rituals did.

The drinks arrived and Janet raised hers. "To future business." She leaned forward and extended her glass towards the asari. Aria smiled and leaned forward, extending her own glass forward in the unfamiliar ritual. Janet clinked her glass against the asari's and sat back, taking a drink. _Now we've got you, Snake. You can't run for much longer._


	26. Chapter 26

It was a couple of days later when Janet found herself far along the circumference of the station, perched atop the flat roof of a three story building. She was crouched low to minimize her profile as much as possible while still retaining the ability to leap to her feet at a moment's notice, and she was peering through a pair of binoculars at a nondescript warehouse. There had been no activity of note so far in the nearly two hours she and the two others accompanying her had been observing the structure, though all the windows were made of tinted one-way glass, making it impossible to see inside.

She glanced aside to look at the smooth, reflective visor of the helmet that obscured the features of the quarian that had guided them there. Aria's people had put her in contact with him, knowing that a newcomer such as she would probably get lost in the maze of Omega's streets and caught up in its endemic petty crime and gang disputes.

He had been introduced with an implausibly long name: "Lando'Mal nar Usela." Though he was the first quarian Janet had ever encountered, he was a typical example of his species based on images and reports she had seen: wearing a sealed enviro-suit and about the same height as she was, though he was broader in his shoulders and had a stockier build.

She – and the Institute – had heard many things about the quarians and their Migrant Fleet since humanity's introduction to the Citadel. About how they had created the geth, originally meant to be a race of synthetic servants, that had turned on their creators over a century ago, wiped most of them out and sent the remnants of the quarian species adrift in space in a flotilla of ships while they hid behind the Perseus Veil, doing God knows what in the formerly quarian space.

The quarians had had their embassy at the Citadel revoked for unleashing an artificial intelligence on the galaxy, a violation of the Citadel Conventions. Nowadays they were viewed by the various species as little more than a minor inconvenience or nuisance... until their Fleet passed through one of their systems. The sheer amount of their ships could take days for all of them to pass through a mass relay, clogging up traffic, while their Fleet had the potential to inadvertently blockade a planet if they were to park their ships in its orbit. Their numbers made the human fleet that had fled the Sol system with the _New America_ seem paltry by comparison.

The most common and effective course of action when the quarian Flotilla entered a system was for the local authorities to offer unwanted resources, such as decommissioned ships, raw materials, and spare parts to their Admiralty. They usually let themselves be bought off with such gifts, with the understanding that their fleet would quickly move on to be a thorn in someone else's side.

Janet couldn't help but see them as the interstellar equivalent of panhandlers. She liked to think that if the refugee fleet hadn't found Samothrace so quickly during the Exodus that they would have had a bit more pride than to force themselves onto others like that.

"What's a quarian doing on Omega?" she had asked when they had first met. "I thought all of you stayed in your Flotilla." The extremely rare personal encounters with quarians and the well known insularity of their Migrant Fleet also contributed to all manner of rumors and perceptions about them. There were, after all, estimated to be only a bit over ten million of them spread out over the thirty thousand ships of their fleet.

The quarian, Lando, had watched her behind the obscuring visor of his helmet, with little more than his eyes and nose to barely make out through it. Eventually he'd answered, "I'm here on my Pilgrimage." He spoke with an accent of some sort, made more alien by the quality his voice was given by speaking from behind a sealed enviro-mask.

"Pilgrimage?" Janet had frowned in puzzlement. "Does Omega have some religious significance for your people?" She couldn't imagine this den of vice and chaos being significant like that in any way, especially given the theme of Aria's club. _Unless the quarians really are as bad as some people make them out to be._

Lando had shook his head. "Keelah, no! It is my rite of passage into adulthood, a tradition we have established since our flight from the geth. When we reach maturity we leave the ships of our parents and our people and wander the stars, seeking out something of value. It is through this that we prove that we are worthy of adulthood."

The human's mouth had twisted. "Something of value, huh?" _Maybe they really _are_ just a bunch of beggars and thieves._

Lando had picked up on the note of disapproval in her voice and when he spoke again, there had been a note of anger in his voice. "Something like food or fuel, a useful technology, or just knowledge that will make life easier for the Flotilla. It cannot be gained by harming another." He had folded his arms across his chest. "I wouldn't expect one of your kind to understand."

Janet had blinked, taken aback at that sudden turn in the conversation. "And what's that supposed to mean?" she'd demanded.

"We are given lessons about the rest of the galaxy before we leave on our Pilgrimage," he'd replied. "I've heard about you humans. You're levo-amino acid based, which more habitable worlds in the galaxy are based on, as opposed to my people, who are dextro-amino acid based. You were lucky enough to find a world after you were exiled by the Draka, but then you burst into the Attican Traverse killing everyone who stood in your way. And when you had angered the Batarian Hegemony after killing enough of their people, you used the turians' rivalry with the Draka to hide behind them as a shield against their retribution." He had made a scornful sound. "At least we quarians stand on our own, and we don't conquer worlds and resources and then shroud ourselves in self-righteousness."

Her jaw had started to sag open in shock before she snapped it shut, while Dublo had remained conspicuously silent behind her. She had had inklings about how the greater galaxy viewed her people, but she had never heard such a sharply negative slant to their image outside of the Snakes' and the batarians' propaganda.

"That's not how it happened-" she'd began, but paused as Dublo had stepped up behind her and leaned his head behind hers to hide it from the quarian's view as he spoke in a low voice only she could hear.

"Antagonizing our guide before we set off across Omega does not seem to be the most expedient course," he had stated.

Confronted with that piece of cogent – if frustrating – advice, Janet had lapsed into a sullen silence, communicating with the quarian only on matters of business from then on as they had traveled to their present perch.

"You're sure this is the place?" she asked for what she realized was at least the sixth time. _Tough. I need to be sure._

"Yes, I am sure," Lando'Mal replied curtly. Then he seemed to relent slightly as she pointedly looked around at the surrounding buildings. Most of them, including the warehouse they were watching, were short, squat structures only two stories high, alike enough to press home the point of her question. "I have been on Omega much longer than I wanted to for my Pilgrimage. I know my way around this part of it."

"Good enough." Janet raised the binoculars back to her eyes to give the warehouse another scan. She pursed her lips as she considered silently, then spoke again after a brief hesitation. "Why _have_ you been on Omega so long then?"

The quarian seemed surprised by the question, and took a moment to gather his thoughts before replying. "Why do you think? I haven't found anything useful enough, of enough value, to bring back to the Flotilla yet. Or at least," he continued bitterly, "something that I can afford." Wryly, "Why else would I be running errands for an asari crimelord? Credits are difficult to come by on Omega when you won't kill, and honest money is non-existent."

Janet lowered the binoculars and looked over at him, while Dublo watched them silently from off to the side. "Why did you come here in the first place then?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Lando let out a brief, bitter laugh. "I didn't know all this when I first left. Then, I thought life outside of all the rules and regulations of the Migrant Fleet must be so _wonderful_ and _free_. Omega especially, all these millions of people from different species and cultures living together, without stifling laws or government. Instead..." He gestured outward with one hand towards Omega as a whole.

Janet found herself shaking her head slightly. _Poor kid. Thought the 'big city' would be better than home._ It was a remarkably... _human_ situation. She could easily picture him as some farm boy from the old USA's breadbasket moving to Chicago, or Toronto, or Mexico City with stars in his eyes and having the harsh reality come down on him like an avalanche.

"Well," she said after a moment, "I hope you're able to find something soon and be able to finish your Pilgrimage then."

The quarian blinked behind the visor of his suit and looked over at her, studying her for long moments. Finally, he nodded, saying, "Thank you. My pay from this will go a long way towards that."

She returned his nod and brought the binoculars back to her eyes as the salarian Spectre silently considered the interaction. _She's more dynamic than I thought._ From her previous behavior revealing her implacable hatred of the drakensis and her attitude towards Dublo himself, he had come to the conclusion that she was possessed of a bitterness that her entire species seemed either shaped by, or perhaps it was a biological marker. Humanity's enmity with the batarians and xenophobic reports from Samothracian space had contributed to that perception.

But the fact that they had gone along, however unwillingly, with the evacuation of the drell spoke of either a flawed perception, or of their one time military government possessing merely an acute political acumen. _But the human female's willingness to make that gesture of reconciliation further undermines that perception. Perhaps there is more to humanity._ It might be worth a suggestion of further study sent to the Council and the dalatrass.

Janet suddenly tensed as the garage door of the warehouse rolled up and threw herself prone just before some rovers sped out, heading towards the nearby spaceport; the quarian squawked as he was knocked over by her sudden motion. Dublo, further from the edge, remained as he was and raised his head slightly to use his own binoculars, which looked to be at least three quarters computer compared to Janet's more basic model.

"Perhaps heading out to pick up a shipment?" the Spectre speculated aloud.

Janet's lips thinned in anger at the thought. "Maybe. Whatever they're doing, there are less of them in there now. This might be a good time for some reconnaissance."

"Those vehicles could return at any time," Dublo observed.

Janet looked over her shoulder at the salarian with a wry smile. "Then we'll leave. We're trying to find out what they're up to, right? It's not like we can just wait until it's dark." She waved at the rock of the asteroid lost to sight in the gloomy recesses far overhead.

Dublo considered a moment, then the corners of his own mouth curved upward slightly. "A fair point. Very well, let's proceed with a reconnaissance then."

Janet nodded, looked over at the quarian, and opened her mouth to say something, but was forestalled when Lando held up a three-fingered hand.

"I'll stay here," he announced. "I wasn't about to volunteer to follow you two in anyway," he finished dryly.

Janet smiled back. "Alright. If we're not back before those rovers return, meet us at the safe house." She waited for the quarian's nod before getting back up in a crouch and looking over at Dublo as she pulled the helmet to her armor on. She had been surprised when he hadn't brought his along. _To each his own._ "Ready?"

At the Spectre's nod of confirmation she got to her feet, took a few careful deep breaths, then ran towards the edge of the building. Space was precious on Omega, so traveling from one building to the next required little more than a leap of fifteen or twenty feet to cross the empty air between them. Even in full armor and combat load, the greatest danger wasn't that she would fall. Rather, it was the chance they would run into the inhabitants of one of the buildings out to enjoy the air above the stink of street level. If that happened, the encounter would surely end with someone getting shot.

Fortunately, there was nobody on the next roof. She landed rolling, both to absorb the impact and muffle sound. She got to her feet just as Dublo landed more lightly beside her. Not only was her armor heavier, but she weighed more. Baseline humans may not have much strength compared to a drakensis, but even she had more dense muscle than a salarian, even as large a specimen as the Spectre.

After a brief scan across the rooftop, Janet nodded to herself. "Right," she muttered quietly, then took a breath and sprinted towards the next roof.

* * *

Luther Tull watched the large batarian shuttle on its long, slow approach to the docks through a viewport, his assault rifle cradled casually in his arms, automatically keeping the armored bulk of one of the rovers between him and any possible danger from the interior of the asteroid. Tarak was standing off to one side, while the remaining ghouloon and a few carefully selected batarian mercenaries who had helped to set up the warehouse were standing further back.

"I still think we should have installed control devices," Tarak commented, glancing over at the Draka briefly.

Luther stopped his lip from curling in disdain as he looked over at the SIU soldier. "An' what's the survival rate when yo' people do that?" he asked rhetorically. They both already knew the answer to that – not many. "Y'all are too impatient," he continued. "Got to break 'em to the yoke personal like. It's how our Domination was built – _through_ domination."

"Fine, fine," the batarian said, shaking his head and dropping the well trodden subject.

Luther smiled inwardly. He still wasn't comfortable with the way Tarak had won those previous arguments. _Doesn't hurt to give him a reminder of why his people need us._ The fact that Tarak, a soldier of the Hegemomy's elite Special Intervention Unit, was even here assisting with a Domination project was a measure of it.

_He's a good enough soldier, but by the White Christ and almighty Thor, these batarians have lost their edge._ He was familiar with their past history in the galaxy, how they had launched raids and conquered systems when the opportunities had presented themselves – not unlike the Draka in that respect. _But now they use 'deniable assets',_ he thought with an inward sneer. _If yo' goin' to launch an attack to put some fear in yo' rivals, let 'em know it was you and have the strength to make 'em regret tryin' to hit back._

The shuttle landed with a soft bump, then extended a docking arm to connect with the airlock before the engines finally died. The drakensis stood straighter and held his Holbars at the ready as the seal pressurized and the doors slid open. He started to open his mouth to call out a greeting to the two drakensis that were the first ones through, wearing unmarked combat armor and holding their own T-8 assault rifles, but it died as he caught sight of those who follow them.

_Servus? Here?_ The scent was unmistakable. Clean, slightly salty, seasoned with curiosity, excitement, awe, fear, a complex hormonal stew that signaled _submission._ They were looking around as they emerged behind the advance party, blinking at the dirty surroundings still bearing the markings of the Primarchs' most recent attempt to take over the district. They eyed the batarians and the ghouloon with wariness and fear, and visibly shrank under their direct gaze.

When they caught sight of Luther standing nearby, their relief was near palpable. They covered their eyes with their hands and bowed at the waist, chorusing, "We live to serve."

"Greetin's," he replied, nodding fractionally to acknowledge their deference, then shot a questioning look at the other two Draka, an eyebrow raised. He bristled inwardly as they ignored him, sweeping their gazes over Tarak and the other batarians, then on to their surroundings. It was a breach of Citizen etiquette, the bond of those of the Race, and especially among those of the War Directorate, even if they were of the Intelligence Section and not a combat unit.

_What in the gods' names is goin' on heah?_ he wondered. The servus were followed by more of their kind wheeling out crates and covered equipment. His frown deepened as their numbers grew to a couple dozen, accompanied by more drakensis in unmarked armor, most of them as unresponsive as the first two.

Finally one of them approached, a female drakensis with a brown hair cropped close to her skull and green eyes. She brought her right fist to chest in a formal salute. "Service to the State."

"Glory to the Race," he replied, returning the salute. "Luther Tull, Tetrarch, VIII Airmobile, Reconnaissance."

"Tina Pinkard, Cohortarch, Krypteia," she replied. The corners of her mouth turned upward slightly as he stiffened and his eyes narrowed.

_Krypteia. Security Directorate intelligence._ His eyes swept across the other Draka, seeing them with new eyes. Every Citizen received formal military training when they came of age, but these were too stiff, they didn't have the same natural wariness that a true Forces veteran had. He turned his eyes back to the Krypteia woman as she turned to Tarak in turn and exchanged her formal Draka greeting with his batarian-style one.

"Cohortarch," he began as they finished their introductions. _She _would_ be a superior officer,_ he thought sourly. "I was, ah, given the understandin' that this was an Intelligence Section project." _A _War_ Directorate project._ His eyes swept across the servus and their equipment again briefly, adding _that_ silent question as well.

Her cool green gaze measured him for a few silent seconds before she replied. "This is a mattah fo' the State, Tetrarch. War an' Security are pursuin' this jointly." Her eyes swept to the servus in turn. "An' we brought some extra help along."

Luther kept his face blank as he replied, "Yes, Cohortarch." Inside, his mind was whirling. _What in _God's_ name is goin' on?_ he thought plaintively. Nobody in IntelSec had said anything about working with headhunters. _Somethin' ain't right._

As he turned towards the rover, he noticed Tarak giving him a questioning look. They had spent enough time working together that he could tell something was off with the drakensis.

Luther walked nearby the batarian as the servus began loading their equipment into one of the rovers. "Later," he murmured under his breath, turning his face towards him so none of the other drakensis could hear him.

Tarak maintained a stoic expression, but examined the other Draka with new eyes himself. _Better find out what this is all about._ It would be all he needed, getting caught up in some internal Draka dispute.

Then he paused and considered. _This could also mean there's a chink in that armor the Domination likes to hold up. The Hegemony might find that of interest._ With that thought running through his head, he followed Luther over to the other rover.

* * *

Janet took a few deep breaths in and out to control her breathing as she crouched and approached the edge of the last roof before the warehouse. She pursed her lips, the corners of her mouth turning downward as she noted the drop of ten feet between the warehouse's roof and that of the neighboring building she was on top of.

Dublo reached her side a moment later and fell to one knee as he also examined the situation. "Problematic," he remarked.

The SSI agent nodded silently in reply. Getting down there wasn't the hard part. _How do we get back over here once the recon is done?_

She glanced over briefly as the Spectre started going through the compartments in his armor, then double taked as he pulled a spool of thick metallic wire tipped with a socket of some sort. It was followed by a globule wrapped in some dull matte colored foil, also tipped with a socket. He quick fitted the two sockets together and twisted them with a satisfyingly deep click.

A pistol-shaped device followed from another compartment, to which he clicked the globule into its barrel. "Adhesive compound," he explained to her unspoken question as he stripped the foil from the globule, revealing a semi-transparent gel that looked, for all intents and purposes, like rubber cement. He aimed it carefully down at the other rooftop, then fired with a muffled hiss of compressed gas, sending it streaking across the intervening space to splat into the other roof. Dublo unreeled a length of the wire, which was far flexible than it had first looked, and wrapped it around his forearm a few times before giving it a few cautious tugs.

"Secure enough. It will be enough to hold our weight to climb back up here." He carefully unreeled more of the wire, keeping it taut, then set the spool down on their rooftop. The press of another button and a hiss of air came through the top of it, leaving it set immovably. "Vacuum seal," he explained again. "This will also bear our weight."

_So much for a rope and grappling hook,_ Janet thought, nodding in approval as she ran her eyes over the set up. _The Institute _really_ needs to get some of these toys._

"We should not tax it overmuch, however," the salarian stated as he got back to his feet and walked back a ways for a running start. He paused, then ran lightly and leaped to the next rooftop below, tucking and rolling as he landed.

By the time Janet joined him, he had already activated his omni-tool and found small sensors along the outside of one of the window frames. With a few deft taps on its holographic interface, he tapped into the sensors' wireless signals and overrode the alarm system.

"I've got this one," she said as she crouched next to him at the edge of the rooftop and pulled out a laser cutter. The small beam carved off a tiny piece of the window's upper corner with a barely audible, high pitched whine. "Just enough for this," she muttered as she pulled a small device with a vid screen and little control sticks and buttons. She extended a maneuverable cable of fiber optics out of it and slid it carefully through the hole she had made.

She frowned as she moved the cable around, watching the images transmitted back to the screen. The window was at one end of a corridor, with several doors that looked to be storage rooms lining either side. At the far end were two chairs set against a wall next to a bank of monitors. One guard, a batarian, was sitting slouched and watching the monitors. The other, also a batarian, was pacing up and down the hall, tapping a stunner from one hand into the other idly. Both were armored and had weapons slotted onto their backs.

"Magnify—" the Spectre began.

"On the monitors, yeah, yeah," she finished for him. "I have done this sort of thing a time or two before," she finished with a wry smirk, shooting him a brief glance.

"Hmm, yes. As I said, I am not used to working with others." He gestured a hand forward. "By all means, proceed."

Janet let out a silent snort, still smirking, as she zoomed in to get a closer look at the images on the monitors. The smirk died as she comprehended what she was seeing. There were six rooms in all, all of them occupied. Two each were full of what appeared to be asari, salarians, and turians. They were all wearing outfits of plain coarse fabric, the salarians and male turians wearing only pants while the female turians and asari were wearing sack dresses. They were standing around idly, none of them sitting, nobody talking.

"It's slaving alright," she muttered, feeling a flush of anger run over her skin. "Looks like the same kind of setup the Snakes' Central Detention uses. Separated by gender except for the salarians."

"No," Dublo chimed in, his expression more unreadable than usual. "All of them are male. Ninety percent of salarians are male, the females usually remain cloistered on Sur'Kesh or other worlds, and become dalatrasses. Obtaining salarian females would not be a simple matter."

Janet nodded thoughtfully, mentally filing that datum away. "How do you want to do this?" she asked after a period of silence finally.

Dublo let out a small sigh, shaking himself mentally. "It would be too risky to free them as it is," he said reluctantly. "Besides, we should let the Council know about this."

"We can't just _leave_ them there!" she whispered fiercely. "No person deserves to be left in their hands." She jarred herself inwardly as she realized what she had said. _Well, yeah, I guess they _are_ people. No matter what they look like._ This trip was proving educational in several ways.

Dublo nodded after a moment. "I agree. Besides, it would be good to have more solid evidence before presenting our findings to the Council." Janet felt another inward jar as she noted the wording of 'our findings'. "But," the Spectre continued, "we alone are not enough to release them from their captivity."

"Then we'll need backup." Her head came up as she heard the unmistakable sound of the rovers returning and the garage door rolling up. She nodded towards the wire silently as she withdrew the optic cable and slid the device back into its compartment. Dublo stopped only to reactivate the window's sensors before following her back to the other roof. Janet reached down and hauled him up the last couple of feet.

"Backup should be no trouble," Dublo said as he dusted his hands together. "Didn't our guide say that there was gang trouble in this district?"

"Right, they've been trying to take over recently," Janet replied, nodding. "Think it's worth looking into?"

Dublo let his eyes swing back to the warehouse. "I don't believe we have much of a choice."


End file.
